


More Than a Memory

by Luthien



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Babies, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Childbirth, F/M, Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Post-Series, Pregnancy, happy-ish ending, references to canon rape and trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-03-26 08:19:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 33,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19001950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luthien/pseuds/Luthien
Summary: Brienne believes that all she has left of Jaime are memories, both bitter and sweet.She’s wrong.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is post-series and canon compliant, so everyone who is dead by the end of 8x06 is still dead. However, the relationship between Brienne and Jaime is at the core of this story and it's at the bottom of a lot of what Brienne is feeling, so I feel it should be under their relationship tag.
> 
> ETA: The rating has increased because of a flashback in Chapter 4. The above still applies to the rest of the story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ro Nordmann has created the beautiful cover art for this story! :D

 

 

Brienne awakes to darkness. She barely has time to wonder what the hour might be before she’s rolling over and grabbing the chamber pot from beneath the bed. She empties the contents of her stomach into it, and sits there in the middle of the bed, still clutching the chamber pot before her as she heaves air into her lungs and carefully does not think about anything at all.

After a few moments, the stench from the chamber pot can no longer be ignored. Lighting the candle on the nightstand, she rises, covers the pot and stows it back under the bed, and crosses the room to the washstand by the window. She rinses out her mouth and spits into the basin. A splash of cold water across her face has her gasping again, and then she pushes open the shutters and lets the cool night air chill her skin.

Far below in Flea Bottom, Brienne can see lights here and there: the flicker of the torches that light the way through the newly-restored streets, the glow of a baker’s oven or perhaps even a blacksmith’s forge. The Red Keep might slumber the night away, but the city never sleeps. Not really.

She dresses quickly, or as quickly as she can, squeezing herself into her armour, and then reaching around to clip the top of her cloak into place. The awkward movement pushes her cuirass hard against her stomach and she’s assailed by another wave of nausea. She masters it, gritting her teeth and pressing her lips firmly together until it passes. Of course it passes. There’s nothing left in her stomach to throw up.

She leaves her chamber—the lord commander’s chamber, _his_ chamber, not so long ago—without a backward glance.

She strides along the corridors of the White Sword Tower. Everything is quiet, as it should be, the torches in their sconces throwing light over the remaining scaffolding and into shadowed corners.

Brienne frowns at the guard at the entrance to the tower, who had been leaning back against the wall but straightens up and stands to attention as she passes. She makes a mental note to talk to the commander of the City Watch about the Gold Cloaks he’s been assigning guard duty in the keep lately. She crosses the courtyard and passes more guards, these ones standing straight and impassive, as she enters Maegor’s Holdfast.

For all it’s been through in recent times, this stout tower has suffered less damage than the White Sword Tower. Of course, walls twelve feet thick will withstand almost anything. _Almost_ anything.

Podrick— _Ser_ Podrick—is standing guard outside the door to the King’s chamber. He turns, hand on his sword hilt as he hears her approaching, and then smiles very slightly as he sees who it is.

“Anything to report?” Brienne asks. She doesn’t comment on the smile, but it disappears as quickly as it arrived, and Ser Podrick somehow manages to stand even straighter than he was a moment ago.

“Nothing, Lord Commander. His Grace retired at the usual hour and all has been quiet since.”

“Good.” Brienne nods. “As you were.”

Podrick salutes her and resumes his post by the door.

As she turns to retrace her steps, Brienne stops. “What time is it?” she asks.

“The bells struck the half hour perhaps twenty minutes ago, Lord Commander, and before that three bells on the hour.”

Brienne shuts her eyes. It’s only for a fraction of a moment, hardly longer than a blink, but that’s still too long. She can’t let herself show… well, anything.

She nods again, and turns back the way she came. Once she turns the corner at the end of the corridor, she stops and closes her eyes for a longer moment now that there’s no one to see. It’s not even four in the morning, even earlier than usual. A few more months of whatever it is that has her stomach roiling at night and she probably won’t be getting any sleep at all—which will at least solve the problem of waking early.

She opens her eyes and sets off down the corridor, making her stride as purposeful as she can—which is quite purposeful indeed.

A diminutive figure awaits her outside the main door to the tower. He’s out of the way of both the guards and the torchlight, standing—some might say _lurking_ —in the shadows, but Brienne notices him immediately.

She’s not surprised to see him there.

“You’re up early. Again,” he comments in lieu of greeting.

“My lord Hand.” Brienne’s bow is as stiff as her tone.

“You should call me Tyrion.”

“So you keep telling me, my lord Hand.”

“And so I _will_ keep telling you until you do, Brienne.”

“ _Lord Commander_ ,” Brienne corrects, trying for annoyance, though her voice sounds weary rather than irritated, even to her own ears. She’s tiring of this game.

Tyrion Lannister lets out a long sigh. Perhaps he is tiring of the game as well.

“Come, _Lord Commander_ , take a cup of wine with me, and we’ll discuss whatever needs discussing until the rest of the Red Keep stirs.” He raises one hand, indicating the way to the Tower of the Hand.

Brienne’s stomach clenches at the mere mention of wine. “Discussion, but no wine,” she says through gritted teeth. She won’t start heaving in front of him. She _will not_.

The Hand shakes his head. “One of these days I’ll get you to share a bottle of wine with me.”

“The same day I call you Tyrion, my lord Hand.”

“What a day that will be,” he says, briefly laying a hand against his heart. But then his expression turns serious. “Those extra ships you and Ser Davos wanted,” he begins.

“There’s a problem?” Brienne asks at once.

The Hand grimaces. “We may have hit a small snag,” he says.

“Let me guess. Bronn?”

“No, not our esteemed Master of Coin this time, for a wonder.”

Brienne nods, and raises her brows in question.

“I notice that you have no trouble calling him by name, by the way,” the Hand observes.

“If not him, then who?” Brienne asks, ignoring this aside.

“Lord Commander Fossoway of the City Watch. He has _concerns_ about the numbers of men deserting the ranks of the Gold Cloaks for the shipyards. Thanks to the urgent deadline we’ve given them to deliver the first of the new ships, not to mention the substantial number of additional gold dragons we’ve promised if they get the ships built ahead of time, the pay is far better than that of a guardsman, or so I am told. And then, Fossoway informs me, there is also the issue of keeping the peace along the waterfront—a task growing much more difficult with fewer men in the ranks every day, apparently.”

Brienne frowns at him. “If he’s not up to the job, then we should find someone who is. You’re the Hand of the King. Can’t you just get rid of him if he stands in the way of what you want?”

“Ah, for the good old days,” the Hand says with a sigh. “Unfortunately, His Grace frowns on that sort of thing. He prefers that we all ‘work together for the common good’. I take it he’s not one of your favourite people? Lord Commander Fossoway, I mean, naturally, not His Grace.”

“No,” Brienne says with another frown. “I was planning to talk to him today. Standards are slipping, even amongst the guards assigned to the Red Keep.”

The Hand leans back against the wall of the tower. “Maybe we should pay more,” he suggests.

“To the Gold Cloaks? The Master of Coin isn’t going to like that idea.”

“I was thinking of Fossoway himself. A decent bribe could do the trick. It might even be cheaper than giving every Gold Cloak a pay rise—though of course a bribe would have to come from my own personal coffers.” The Hand winces slightly.

“A bribe doesn’t sound much like ‘working together for the common good’,” Brienne points out.

They walk off together, deep in conversation. Brienne tries very hard not to show it, but she is grateful for the Hand’s company and the distraction he provides: the distraction of work, of problems that need to be solved, of anything that keeps her too busy to sit and think.

It’s just the start of what proves to be an all too eventful day.

~*~

The first pale streaks of dawn are touching the sky when Brienne at last descends from the Tower of the Hand and makes her way back to her own tower. Breakfast arrives soon after: porridge with milk and honey, boiled eggs, bread and cheese, fingerfish fried in breadcrumbs, and a large earthenware teapot, filled with refreshing mint tea.

Brienne pours herself a cup of tea, nibbles on a slice of dry bread, and pushes everything else to one side. The aromas from the breakfast tray still assail her nostrils, but the tea works its magic and settles her stomach. She’s ready for whatever the day brings—or, more likely, throws at her.

A meeting with her brothers of the Kingsguard is the first order of the day. She sits at the head of the table where three hundred years of lords commander have sat, where, less than a year ago, _he_ sat.

Only Ser Diarmid Belmore is absent, replacing Ser Podrick at the King’s side. No one has much of note to report. This makes Brienne uneasy. She likes to be aware of even the slightest potential threat to the King before it has a chance to turn into something more. Just because the Kingsguard has not discovered any recently doesn’t mean that they’re not out there.

They desperately need a Master of Whisperers. Of all the positions at court and on the Small Council, it’s been the one most difficult to fill. Not for the first time, Brienne wishes that Daenerys Targaryen had not seen fit to sentence Lord Varys to death by dragonfire.

The meeting is followed by sparring practice, which drives all thoughts from her head but the next move, and the one after that. She is victorious over all three of her opponents, but afterwards she stands there, breathing hard as her stomach does somersaults. She doesn’t feel nauseated this time, but as if her stomach is actually moving of its own accord. After a few moments it settles down and starts behaving as it should again, and Brienne continues on with her day.

She hunts down the Lord Commander of the City Watch, running him to ground in his office after a long search that takes her down into the city and along the waterfront—where, surprisingly, she finds that the guards appear to have no trouble at all maintaining the King’s peace.

Her conversation with Lord Commander Roland Fossoway takes much less time than her search for him, but is even less productive. The man is obstinate, so much so that Brienne wonders what he has to hide. She’s so irritated that for a few fleeting seconds she even wonders if the Hand’s proposed bribe might not be such a bad idea after all. Or perhaps they could send him home to tend the family apple orchard. His Grace wants them all to work together, and it seems to Brienne that Fossoway is the only one who is determined not to have any part in that.

She manages to eat most of a bowl of stew together with a thick heel of bread at midday. Fortunately, the stew little resembles the bowls o’ brown on offer at the bottom of Aegon’s Hill in Flea Bottom, containing plenty of barley and recognisable vegetables like carrots and neeps, plus pieces of red meat that may actually be beef, in a thick, hearty stock tasting of sage and thyme.

The Small Council convenes in the early afternoon, and argues about priorities and money, just as it always does.

"I've told you before, you can't have funding for your extra ships without something in return," Ser Bronn, Master of Coin, says with an exasperated sigh.

"A brothel of your very own?" the Hand suggests, almost like an indulgent parent, if you ignore the heavy sarcasm.

"I already have a brothel of my own, thank you very much. And anyway, you know I don't mean that you have to give me something in return. The _realm_ needs something in return."

"What about a docking tax, for any ship putting into port, anywhere in the Six Kingdoms," Brienne suggests. "It doesn't have to be a large tax. Maybe a copper star or two. There are many ships arriving at our ports every day, after all. And then the masters of ships would pay for the construction of the war ships that protect them."

Ser Bronn looks at her in admiration. "You want to gift the realm a tax? You're a woman after my own heart."

"The King's warships will not be protecting the shipping along the entire coast of the Six Kingdoms. The Lannister fleet is responsible for much of the west, for example," the Hand points out, looking somewhat pained.

"You just don't want to be unpopular with all the shipping folk in Lannisport—not to mention that you own an awful lot of ships that will now be subject to tax every time they dock." Ser Bronn grins at him. They're old friends. Almost.

"Says the Lord Paramount of the Reach, who benefits from those Lannister ships sailing along his coastline," the Hand shoots back.

"So, apply the tax only in King's Landing and in the larger ports along the east coast where the King's fleet usually sails," Ser Davos, Master of Ships, puts in, raising his hands in a conciliatory gesture. "We can require more tax of the larger ships like the merchantmen, maybe a silver stag apiece, and keep it minimal for the smaller vessels, fishing boats and such."

Ser Bronn considers this rather obviously for a moment, an eyebrow raised as if deep in thought. "That might just do it," he says at last.

"Then we have the funding for the extra ships?" the Hand asks.

"We do," says the Master of Coin.

Ser Davos tries very hard not to grin like a particularly pleased… something. He really needs a better sigil than an onion. Something fierce like a direwolf or a stag or a…

Brienne glances for one second, two, _three_ , at the sigil emblazoned across the Hand’s jerkin, then jerks her gaze away and back to Ser Davos.

The Master of Ships is still wearing that almost-grin, like an onion that… No, it truly does not work in any simile that she can think of. One thing is for sure, though. The Lord Commander of the Gold Cloaks will most definitely not be wearing a matching grin when he hears about that decision—but then, the Lord Commander of the Gold Cloaks does not sit on the King’s Small Council.

Brienne allows herself a tiny grin of her own.

“Anything you wish to add, _Lord Commander_?” the Hand asks.

“Nothing, _my lord Hand_.” She meets his gaze, and if a vestige of a smile is still on her lips, well, it has nothing to do with the Hand’s addressing her by her title. Nothing at all.

The meeting concludes soon after, and the members of the Small Council take their leave of each other.

Brienne considers seeking out the Lord Commander of the Gold Cloaks to see how he takes the news, but before she can go anywhere a wave of dizziness sweeps over her as she leaves the council chamber and she staggers, bracing a hand against the wall to steady herself.

Fortunately, most of the Small Council has already dispersed, but the Hand sees everything as he walks along the corridor behind her. Of course he does.

“Lady Brienne, you are unwell!” he says, hurrying up to her.

“ _Lord Commander_ ,” she grits out, “and I’m fine.”

“You look pale,” he contradicts her.

“I’m fine,” she repeats, and then ruins her words by turning away from him and being noisily sick. Bits of half-digested meat and carrot, mixed with yellow bile, splatter the wall and drip down onto the floor.

“No, _you’re not_ ,” he says, reaching up and awkwardly patting her lower back. “Let me summon a guardsman to accompany you back to your quarters.”

“ _No_ ,” Brienne hisses. She will lose their respect if she shows any hint of weakness. She’ll just be another _woman_ in their eyes.

To his credit, Tyrion Lannister doesn’t argue with her. “Then let me come with you, at least. What could be more natural than the Hand of the King and the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard taking a stroll together while they discuss important affairs of state? People will see us and assume you are accompanying me, not the other way around. No one will give us a second look.”

It’s a sensible suggestion. Brienne doesn’t want to be sensible. She wants to stride off, a strong and respected knight, just as she has been ever since that night in the great hall at Winterfell.

_His_ image swims into being before her eyes, so vivid and real that for a moment she can see every hair on his head, the hint of grey in his beard, the glimmer of his armour in the firelight, the warmth in his eyes as he addressed her as Brienne of Tarth, a knight of the seven kingdoms. And then Tyrion’s voice, leading the others in a toast, as she’s called Ser Brienne for the very first time. That had made them start. They’d forgotten, both of them, that there was anyone else in the room until the others had started to applaud.

“Lord Commander Brienne.”

Brienne shakes her head, and she’s back in the present, in the Red Keep in King’s Landing. The Hand is saying her name. She gathers he’s said it more than once.

“Thank you,” she says jerkily, and turns to continue along the corridor. She doesn’t wait to see if he follows, but she hears him saying something to someone behind her—probably telling a servant to clean up the mess.

He does follow, and catches her up before she gets to the stairs. They don’t say much, either of them, as they cross the courtyard, and he’s wrong about people not giving them a second look. Of course people notice them; they’re two of the most important members of the court. The people they pass don’t seem to notice anything out of the ordinary, though, and soon Brienne is outside the door to her chamber.

“Should I send for Grand Maester Samwell—or, perhaps better, Maester Bertrand?” the Hand asks. The Grand Maester’s assistant, unlike Samwell Tarly himself, is well versed in the healing arts.

Brienne shakes her head. “No, I don’t need a maester. I’ll be fine. I _am_ fine.”

“Very well,” says the Hand. “I’ll take my leave of you. Nothing more need—or will—be said.” He bows, not deep but formal. Respectful.

“Thank you,” Brienne bites out, and knows she sounds ungracious.

“I’ve already forgotten it,” he says, but he gives her a searching look before he nods, and leaves her standing there.

The shutters on the window of her chamber are closed, and it’s clear that the maid has visited in Brienne’s absence. The bed has been made up, the floor swept and the small table cleared of the breakfast things.

Brienne fully intends to go to her desk in the light and airy room where the Kingsguard met just hours ago—there is always correspondence and reports that need seeing to—but the furs on the bed look so inviting that she just stands there and stares down at them. Maybe if she stretches out nice and flat for a few minutes her stomach will settle.

She divests herself of her armour without too much difficulty and props Oathkeeper against the wall by the bed. The ruby eyes of its golden lion’s head pommel glisten like shining points of blood in the half-light creeping in around the edges of the shutters. She turns away from the sword, though she can still feel those lifeless eyes on her, and lies down on the bed. The fur is soft against her cheek, like the furs in another, larger bed in a great castle far to the north. A bed more than large enough for two tall people, unlike the narrow cot she sleeps in now.

She fancies she can almost feel the warmth of _his_ bare skin against hers, his lips as he captures hers in a kiss, the feel of him arching up into her as she rides him hard…

_… and the hard note in his voice, implacable and sad as he tells her of all the terrible things he’s done, for Cersei. That she’s hateful and so is he. He’s leaving Winterfell. Leaving her. For Cersei—he doesn’t say it, but she hears it all the same._

A sob catches in her throat, and Brienne buries her face in the bed furs.

_She hears herself begging him not to leave her as she stands there in the snow, a heavy black cloak hastily thrown over her nakedness. She can’t bear to look, so she doesn’t see him go. She doesn’t know if he looks back. She’ll never know. She stares down at the ground, though she can’t see it through her tears. When at last she looks up, he’s gone, swallowed by the winter night. It’s as if he’s never been there at all._

Brienne screws her eyes up tight and lets out a long, shaking sigh. It doesn’t matter now. None of it matters. He’s gone, dead, just a memory, almost like something made up, a character in a story. Someone else’s story.

~*~

Brienne doesn’t remember falling asleep, but when she opens her eyes the sun has moved away from this side of the Red Keep and the room is darker than it was when she lay down. She pulls back the covers and gets up, going over to the window to fling open the shutters. The late afternoon sun paints the city below in shades of pink and gold, interspersed with long shadows.

Her mouth tastes _disgusting_. She rinses out her mouth and spits into the washstand basin. This is beginning to feel like a habit—one she doesn’t intend to repeat.

She dresses, well, not swiftly but as swiftly as she can. She’s just finished girding her sword when there’s a hammering on the door. Brienne makes her way unhurriedly to the door and opens it, just as Roland Fossoway raises his fist to pound on the door once again. He’s a thickset man of medium height with thinning, greying hair, fast approaching middle age, and right now he’s showing every sign of being in the grip of a towering fury.

“Lord Commander,” she says calmly.

He doesn’t return her greeting. “Just what in the Stranger’s name do you think you’re doing?” he demands.

“What I’m… doing?” Brienne allows a quizzical frown to settle on her face.

“Persuading the Small Council to fund those extra ships! And after everything I told you just today! Pah! This is a job for a man.” And he spits at her feet.

Brienne stares at him. He’s chosen entirely the wrong day to try this. Not that there ever would have been a right day. She takes one very purposeful step forward and leans in so close that he can probably smell her—hopefully still slightly foetid—breath.

“A man like you?” she asks scornfully, enunciating every word with deadly precision. “I have a seat on the Small Council because I am the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. And do you know why His Grace chose me for that position? Because I proved myself, over and over again. I protected and saved his sisters, and helped restore his House. I fought for the living against the undead, and lived to tell the tale. Tell me, Ser Roland, how have you proved yourself?”

Ser Roland takes a step back. “I told you,” he says again, but sounding much less certain than before.

“Yes, you did,” Brienne agrees. “And you’re wrong on both counts: I didn’t persuade the Small Council to fund the extra ships. I was just one of the voices in the discussion. And this is not a job for a man. Right now, it’s a job for a woman. _This_ woman.”

She takes another step forward, and Ser Roland takes another step back, and swallows convulsively. She’s been meticulously polite in all of her previous dealings with him. Clearly, that was a mistake.

“Was there anything else you wished to discuss?” Brienne asks pleasantly, her stance all threat. It’s not really her speaking, though. Oh, it’s her voice, but she can hear the echo of someone else’s mocking tones in her words. If nothing else, _he_ has given her this.

“Perhaps another time,” Ser Roland suggests, though his voice cracks a bit on the last word, and he backs away a bit more.

“Another time. Perhaps,” Brienne says. _Or perhaps not_ , she thinks. She waits until he has disappeared down the corridor and then closes the door to her chamber behind her.

She needs to speak to the King.

~*~

King Bran "the Broken" Stark, First of His Name, King of the Andals and the First Men, Lord of the Six Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm, sits before Brienne in the wheeled chair that for most intents and purposes has replaced the iron throne. His perpetually calm demeanour and slight, inscrutable smile no longer unnerve her now that she’s spent months as Lord Commander of his Kingsguard. There is no malice in him, nor passion of any kind.

“You want to speak to me about the Lord Commander of the City Watch,” he says. It’s not a question.

That _does_ unnerve her, his knowing what she’s going to say before she says it, no matter how often he does it, no matter that she knows as well as anyone and better than most just what it means that he’s not only the King but the Three-eyed Raven as well.

“Yes, Your Grace,” Brienne says with a low bow. "Lord Commander Fossoway has made strenuous objections to the funding of the fleet, and insisted… aggressively, far more so than those sorts of objections should usually warrant, that the construction of the planned additional ships should not proceed."

"You think he isn't mentioning his real reasons."

"That is my concern, Your Grace."

The King doesn't pause to think about what should be done next. He's probably already decided long ago. "Speak to the Hand. You and he should talk to Lord Commander Fossoway. He is not to be imprisoned, but post a member of the Kingsguard outside his chambers for the time being."

Brienne nods her assent. "And the command of the City Watch in the meantime?"

"Draw up a list of candidates and have the Small Council agree upon a choice for an interim lord commander."

"Yes, Your Grace," Brienne says. He doesn't want a new lord commander, even an interim one, to be indebted to the patronage of any single member of the Small Council. It's a wise decision, given where that's sometimes led things in the past.

The King smiles very slightly. It's a dismissal.

Brienne bows. As she turns to leave, the King nods to Ser Podrick to push his chair back to the window so he can look out over the city.

Brienne wonders what he sees. Somehow, she doesn't think it's anything like what she sees when she looks out of her own window.


	2. Chapter 2

When Brienne is admitted to the Hand's chambers some time later, he is just settling down to a substantial repast of mushroom soup, hot fish tarts, steamed greens drizzled with butter, chunks of potato and pumpkin slow-baked until they've caramelised, and roasted lamb covered in garlic and rosemary, smothered in a rich gravy made from its juices.

To her astonishment, the many different smells emanating from the serving platters don't turn Brienne's stomach. Instead, she suddenly feels ravenously hungry.

"Please, join me," the Hand says, indicating the chair opposite his own at the small round table.

He looks mildly surprised when she actually does so. A servant produces a plate and cutlery from somewhere and then, at the Hand's nod, the man leaves them alone.

The first bite of lamb is blissful, but it's only after she's also consumed three of the small fishy tarts and cleared her plate of pumpkin and potato that Brienne looks up to find the Hand watching her.

"Wine?" he says, tilting the decanter above a silver goblet elaborately decorated with a stylised version of the Lannister lion. Its eyes are tiny specks of ruby, like the lion's head on the pommel of her sword. They stare at Brienne balefully.

"No," she says shortly, looking away from the goblet and down at her plate. "Thank you," she adds belatedly.

"One day, one day," the Hand says with a mock-sigh, refilling his own goblet instead. "So, to what do I owe the pleasure of your company?"

He asks the question with a straight face, but Brienne eyes him suspiciously. "I've been to see the King about Ser Roland Fossoway," she says.

"Oh," the Hand says innocently. Too innocently.

"That's what you wanted, isn't it? For me to go to him instead of you."

The Hand takes a long draught of wine before answering. "I thought it would be more… productive coming from you rather than from me. After all, His Grace told me that we needed to work together for the common good, and that's just what I'm doing."

"By getting me to do your dirty work for you."

"I wouldn't call it dirty work. More a necessary development. And speaking of which, how exactly have developments… developed?"

"After our meeting this afternoon, Ser Roland came to me. He was…" Brienne pauses, searching for the right word, " _displeased_ with the decision the Small Council had made about the extra ships for the fleet. Out of all proportion displeased, in fact."

"Interesting," says the Hand, taking another sip of wine. "I wonder who's paying him? Or threatening him, perhaps."

"His Grace requested that we speak with Ser Roland, and see what we can find out, and that the Kingsguard guard him in his chambers for the moment."

"I take it you've seen to that?"

"I sent Ser Diarmid Belmore and Ser Willem Falwell to ensure that Ser Roland was in his quarters and remained there. He waits at your pleasure, my lord Hand."

Brienne waits, but the Hand doesn't try to insist that she call him by his given name, as he usually does. Instead, he leans back in his high-backed chair, steepling his fingers before him, and smiles.

"Then I think it won't hurt to let him wait a trifle longer. To wait, and wonder." He claps his hands and the servant appears, almost as if by magic. "The sweet course," the Hand commands.

In next to no time, the remains of the main course are whisked away and replaced by a dish of poached peaches swimming in a honeyed wine sauce, and a baked custard filled with raisins and sprinkled liberally with nutmeg. The decanter of red wine is replaced with another, filled with an amber liquid, and the servant sets down two smaller goblets, decorated with the same ruby-eyed lion design as the others, before withdrawing.

"Surely you won't decline a cup of Arbor Gold?" the Hand asks. Their eyes meet, and he sighs. "Of course you will."

They exchange few words throughout the remainder of the meal. Despite all that she's consumed, Brienne feels no hint of nausea. Her back aches, though, as she sits back in her chair. It's been aching frequently of late. She must have strained something during sword practice one day.

She touches her napkin to the corners of her mouth and sets it down beside her bowl. The Hand has already pushed his bowl to one side, and now he drains his goblet. The decanter is almost empty.

"If you're ready, Lord Commander?" he asks, and waits politely until she rises from her seat before getting to his feet as well. "Let us go and find out what the Lord Commander—ah, but no. No longer. Let us go and find out what _Ser Roland_ can tell us about his interest in His Grace's fleet, or his interest in His Grace's potential lack thereof."

"I need to check on His Grace first," Brienne says.

"Can't it wait? We can go and have our little chat with Fossoway, and then report back to the King afterwards."

"No," Brienne says. "The Kingsguard have just changed shift. Ser Lanard Inchfield is with the King. I want to have a word with him to be especially alert while he guards His Grace tonight. This whole episode with Ser Roland Fossoway troubles me."

"As you wish." The Hand nods his acquiescence. "Do you mind if I start without you?" And suddenly there's a slightly unsettling gleam in his eye.

Brienne looks at him, narrow-eyed. "Will you agree not to do anything that I wouldn't do?"

"Not at all," he replies without hesitation. "There are so very many things you can do that I cannot, and, without wishing to boast, certain things that I can do far better than you. I have a certain facility with words that lends itself well to interrogation."

"That's true," Brienne admits grudgingly. "But will you at least agree not to do anything of which I would disapprove?"

"No torture, you mean? Oh, I don't think it will come to that. Would you say that Ser Roland is among the bravest knights you've ever known?"

Brienne snorts.

"Exactly. So go to His Grace and assure yourself that all is well, and then come join me in Ser Roland's quarters."

"Very well," Brienne says. "I won't be long."

"I'm counting on that," says the Hand, standing back to let Brienne precede him out of the room.

Behind them, the servant is already clearing away all trace of their meal.

~*~

Brienne strides down the corridor to the King's chambers, much as she did at the very beginning of this day. Now, just as then, the torches flicker in their sconces as she passes. The only difference is that this time there is no guard to be seen by the door. Ser Lanard must be attending the King.

She raps on the heavy oak door and hears the muffled command from the other side for her to enter. She does so, and finds Ser Lanard Inchfield is indeed waiting on the King. The window is open, as it almost always is until His Grace retires for the night, regardless of the cold, with a silk curtain drawn halfway across. For once King Bran's wheeled chair is not sitting by it. Ser Lanard stands there, an earnest young knight from the Reach, distinguished on the tourney field and more recently in battle, the curtain billowing slightly behind him. Meanwhile, both chair and King are on the other side of the room, waiting while two servants fill the great copper bathtub from steaming pails of water.

That's what saves him.

The first hint that something is other than it should be is a scraping sound from behind the curtain and a split second later a soft "oof" from Ser Lanard. Brienne is already drawing her sword as Ser Lanard hits the floor in a clatter of armour, a jewelled dagger protruding from his neck as bright red blood spurts from the wound.

A black figure steps into the room and Brienne is assailed by a memory of an assassin made from smoke. But no, he bares a set of white, ordinary teeth, and she sees the sheen of eyes behind two holes in what is clearly a mask. This is a living man, dressed all in black. He's a man who has apparently just ascended the outside of the tower much like a cat climbs a tree, and with as little regard for the sheer drop below him. But he's still a man for all that, and that means he can be killed.

The man slips a long spear from a sort of holster on his back, and sheathes the dagger in his hand, the mate of the one still sticking out of Ser Lanard, in a short scabbard at his hip. He advances, his focus on the slight, silent figure in the chair.

Brienne circles, putting herself between the King and the intruder. Behind her, one of the servants screams. It serves as enough of a distraction for the man to glance ever so slightly in the girl's direction. Quick as a flash, Brienne takes advantage of the opening and lunges, but the man is just as quick and dances back out of her reach. His eyes are on her now, circling, circling…

She feints a jab at his shoulder and follows through with a punch to the gut with her mailed fist that should have felled him, but he pivots and rolls right out of the way, tucking his spear longways in front of him, and springs back onto his feet, advancing, advancing, then retreating a step or two as he sizes her up.

This is no hired thug or even simply a skilled assassin. He's a trained fighter, that much is clear—and possibly an acrobat as well.

He turns suddenly, and then comes at Brienne from the side with his spear. She's ready for it, and deflects the blow with her sword, but how she wishes for a shield. She has her armour and she has her sword. It will have to be enough. It _will_ be enough. The King and the entire kingdom are counting on her to do her job.

She needs to drive him back towards the window, away from the King. Somewhere behind her the girl is screaming again, while another voice tries to shush her. Brienne can't count on that to distract the assailant again, but it can't hurt to choose that moment to run straight at him. He comes at her at the same moment, trying to get past her guard, and their weapons clash. Her sword, her _Valyrian steel_ sword, doesn't leave so much as a scratch on his spear, not this time and not when their weapons come together again, and yet again.

She's trying to get him where she wants him, cornered against the wall by the window, but he's forcing her back towards the others, one defensive step at a time.

With an angry grunt, Brienne hacks at him, hacks the air, and then he's gone and she whirls to find him behind her.

He swings the spear in an arc, hard and swift, leaving himself open for a fraction of a second, and Brienne's armoured knee comes up between his legs as he tries to slam the spearpoint into her side. Her cuirass deflects the worst of the blow, and the spear clatters to the floor. Brienne expects him to clutch his groin and crumple up in agony—but he just keeps coming at her with the dagger in his hand now, a flash of white teeth against his black get-up, grinning at her surprise. He'll need to get closer to use it effectively, but that dagger is just as dangerous as the spear, in the hands of someone who knows what he's doing with it. Brienne _has_ to disarm him.

She has the advantage of range, sword against dagger, and she makes full use of it. She drives him back towards the window with wide, sweeping blows. She has him properly on the defensive at last. Slicing with swift precision, the tip of her sword cuts through the leather of his sleeve, leaving a bright slash of blood against the black. She slices again, catching the blade of the dagger this time, and the dagger goes flying. There's the sharp ring of metal striking metal as the dagger hits the frame of the oval mirror on the wall.

That was too easy. Brienne whirls around as her opponent cartwheels back towards the King—towards where the man's spear is lying on the floor. Roaring in rage, she launches herself at the intruder, trying to knock him down before he has a chance to use that spear. She cannons into him, sweeping him off his feet a heartbeat too late.

The spear flies through the air and there's a sickening thud as spearpoint meets flesh and bone.

For a long moment there is silence. Then the girl starts to scream.

Brienne gets halfway to her feet and leans down to pull the mask off the intruder's face. He's unconscious—and he's Unsullied.

She leaves him there and turns, dreading what she's going to find.

King Bran is still in his chair, splattered with blood and silent as the grave. One of the servant girls is lying half across him, the spear sticking out of her breast as she stares sightlessly upwards.

Brienne pulls off a gauntlet, and slaps the screaming girl across the face with her bare hand. "Summon the guards, and then fetch Maester Bertrand. Don't stop for anything. _Run_."

The girl gulps, staring at Brienne with wide, shocked eyes. And then she turns and runs.

"Your Grace, are you hurt?" Brienne asks urgently.

"I'm fine. The spear didn't touch me," the King says with his usual calm as Brienne pulls the dead body off him and lays it on the floor.

Brienne lets out a long breath. Thank the gods.

She checks on Ser Lanard then, even though she knows there's no recovering from a wound like that. He looks surprised, and young. So young. She passes a hand over his staring eyes, shutting the lids.

A strange almost other-worldly calm descends upon Brienne as she uses Oathkeeper to cut a couple of lengths from the curtain cord, and turns her attention back to the intruder. He's definitely an Unsullied. His skill with the spear and the hair cropped short against his skull tell her that, quite apart from his reaction when she kneed him where his balls should have been. He begins to come around, moaning softly, as she finishes tying his hands behind him. She starts on his feet, then. He'll be trussed like a roast fowl by the time he realises where he is.

Two Gold Cloaks rush in, followed a few seconds later by another four, and Brienne gets back on her feet.

"This man tried to kill the King," she tells the first pair. "You two, take him to the cells and don't let anyone near him until I come, or the Hand does. _No one_. Is that clear?"

"Yes, Lord Commander," says one and, "At once, Lord Commander," says the other as he drags the prisoner to his feet and hoists him over one shoulder.

Brienne turns to a third guard. "Go to the guards on the main gate. Tell them that no one is to enter or leave the Red Keep until they are commanded otherwise." It's all too likely that the intruder had accomplices. They're going to have to search every corner of the Red Keep, though it's probably already too late. No one alive knows all the secret ways built into the bowels of this place.

The King's head tips forward, and it's only then that Brienne realises he's been 'elsewhere' while she's been speaking. She's still feeling so unnaturally calm that not even this has the power to send so much as a twinge of uneasiness through her.

"His accomplices are waiting on a small beach just outside the city walls," the King says. "Ask the Hand. He knows where it is."

"You heard His Grace," Brienne says to a fourth guard. It occurs to her then that there is one person alive who must know all the secret passages in and out of the Red Keep. It's just as well that he's their King. "You will find the lord Hand in Ser Roland Fossoway's quarters, along with Ser Willem Falwell and Ser Diarmid Belmore. Once Lord Tyrion has explained exactly where to find them, Ser Willem is to lead a force to apprehend the people who assisted this man in trying to murder our King. Please also tell the Hand that his presence is required here in His Grace's chamber. Ser Diamid is to remain with Ser Roland."

"Yes, Lord Commander," the guard says.

"And send someone to find Ser Podrick. He's probably in the White Sword Tower. If any of the other Kingsguard are there, send them here too."

"Yes, Lord Commander," the man repeats, and hurries away hard on the heels of the other three guards.

There are two guards left. "You two, guard the door to this room. Check with me before allowing anyone in," Brienne orders.

"Yes, Lord Commander." The two guards voice the familiar refrain and go to station themselves outside the door.

The door closes, and Brienne is left alone with her King. Well, alone if you discount the two bodies lying on the floor. The King's face is splattered with blood, and considerably more has soaked into his tunic and covered his hands. Brienne looks about for a towel to clean off at least some of the blood. Surely there must be some around here somewhere, since the servants were in the act of preparing His Grace's bath when the attack happened.

She's saved from her search by one of the guards rapping on the door and announcing the arrival of Maester Bertrand.

Brienne goes to the door and opens it. "Let him in," she says, stepping back to let the maester through. He's a thin, youngish man with bright red hair and slightly protuberant blue eyes, wearing a chain made up of one link each pewter, brass, red gold, and several other metals, plus two silver links, signifying expertise in the healing arts. He's carrying a leather case, and another larger leather satchel hangs from one shoulder.

"Your Grace?" he asks in alarm, setting down his bags and hurrying over to the King.

"I'm uninjured," King Bran tells him, "though Lord Commander Brienne took a heavy blow when she was defending me."

The maester casts a questioning glance at Brienne. She shakes her head. "Nothing I haven't experienced before," she says. "Your Grace," she adds, turning to address the King, "I humbly request that you allow Maester Bertrand to examine you, just to be completely sure."

The fact that the King cannot feel his legs, or anything below his waist, is left unsaid.

"You may examine me," the King says, "but then you'll also take a look at Lord Commander Brienne."

A protest almost bursts from Brienne, but she masters the impulse, biting her lip and taking in a deep breath before she says, "Of course, Your Grace."

She pushes the King's chair over to the magnificent four-poster canopied bed made of carved oak and hung with colourful silk brocade woven to depict scenes from the history of the seven—now six—kingdoms. Brienne lifts the King from his chair and places him gently upon the bed with his head and back supported by a multitude of pillows. Maester Bertrand steps in and carefully unbuttons the King's tunic, then his hose, and pushes down his braies. There isn't so much as a scratch to be seen anywhere on his body, or at least nowhere on the parts of his body that have been touched by blood. It all belonged to the girl.

"I told you," the King says, but it's not an accusation. He never says anything with rancour. "Perhaps someone could find me a fresh tunic and hose," he suggests, as Maester Bertrand fastens the buttons along the waistband of his hose.

"Of course, I-" Brienne stops. "Your Grace, may I ask where your body servant might be?" The serving girls might be the ones tasked with lugging the pails of water for the King's bath up from the kitchens, but it's the King's body servant who scrubs his back and dresses him and attends to all of his other most personal needs. The man is almost always present, but tonight he's nowhere to be seen.

"They'll find him soon," says the King, the slightest hint of sadness in his voice.

Brienne doesn't know what to say to that. She nods in acknowledgement for lack of any words, and exchanges a brief, worried glance with Maester Bertrand, before returning to her search for a towel for His Grace.

She retrieves a clean tunic and hose from the King's wardrobe and finds a pile of large, soft towels on the far side of the copper bathtub. She dips a towel in the warm bath waters, and between them, she and the maester clean the worst of the blood off the King and dress him, before Brienne returns him to his chair.

"Take me to the window," says the King.

"Your Grace, with the greatest respect, I don't think that's a good idea," Brienne says carefully, glancing reflexively over at the window.

"It's all right. There's no danger now."

And what can anyone not gifted with the sight of the Three-eyed Raven say to that? Nothing, except for, "Yes, Your Grace."

Brienne takes a step—and there's a gush of warm fluid between her legs. Is it blood? Was she injured in the fight and simply didn't notice? It's been known to happen, usually when a knight sustains a serious injury. It's the minor cuts that are more likely to hurt straight away. She looks down at the fluid pooling on the floor between her feet. It's not blood, or even pee. It looks more like water.

Maester Bertrand, who has been examining the dead body of the serving girl looks up and follows Brienne's gaze. "Let me examine you," he says, coming over to Brienne. "His Grace did say I was to do so."

"No!" says Brienne, with far more vehemence than she intends. "I'm fine. I-"

There's a sharp rap on the door, and one of the guards outside announces: "The Hand of the King and Grand Maester Samwell."

There's some noise outside that sounds almost like a scuffle, and then Brienne hears Podrick's voice saying sharply, "Let me in, or do I have to run you through?"

"And Ser Podrick Payne," the guard adds. The door flies open before Brienne can take a step towards it and Podrick strides in, closely followed by the Hand and the Grand Maester.

"Are you well, Your Grace?" Podrick asks, hurrying over to the King.

"I am well," the King replies. "But the maesters need to look to Ser Brienne."

Brienne flushes. "I'm fine." She's not sure how many times she'll have to say it until they believe her.

Podrick notices Ser Lanard then, and his breath catches as he gazes on his fallen brother. They were like in age, and had both seen much in their young lives. And if the intruder had chosen his moment just half an hour earlier, it would have been Ser Podrick standing by the window at the crucial moment and maybe lying there now. After a second, Podrick— _Ser_ Podrick—looks away again and very deliberately goes to stand by the King's chair, hand ready on the hilt of his sword.

The Hand takes his time crossing the room, his gaze lingering first on one dead body and then on the other. "Your Grace," he says, bowing low to the King, "I am relieved to see you in good health."

"I am relieved to be in good health," says the King, his voice as devoid of strong emotion as ever, "thanks to Ser Brienne."

The Hand gives a short bow to Brienne in acknowledgement. "What happened here?" he asks her.

"As you know, there was an intruder," Brienne says. "He came in through the window, armed with daggers and a spear. How, exactly, he managed to climb so high I'm not sure. The only thing I am sure about is that he's an Unsullied."

"Indeed," says the Hand, his brow rising.

"I fought him and defeated him before he could get to His Grace, but still not quite quickly enough." Brienne looks over at the serving girl, whose name she doesn't even know, and at Ser Lanard, his promising future snuffed out in a moment, and allows the beginnings of sorrow to touch her.

"I don't see another body," the Hand says. "The intruder is in custody?"

"I knocked him unconscious. The guards have taken him to the cells."

"It appears that I have two long conversations ahead of me this night," the Hand observes.

"Do you think that Ser Roland Fossoway might be mixed up in this somehow, then?" Brienne asks.

"I'd have to say it seems likely at this point," the Hand admits. "We may know more once Ser Willem returns from pursuing those who helped this Unsullied, whoever he is. Ser Bronn accompanied Ser Willem, which should help." By which he means that while Ser Willem is a skilled swordsman and a valiant knight, Ser Bronn can be relied upon to approach things with the rat cunning of the street fighter if required, Brienne knows.

"I've sent word to the guards on the main gate not to let anyone in or out of the Red Keep for the time being," Brienne says. "We need to search everywhere inside and ensure that there's no one else lying in wait to try their luck scaling the tower. I-"

A sharp, clenching pain seizes her midsection, and she clutches her belly, almost doubling over as she wills it to pass—and, after much too long a moment, it does. Brienne is left panting, dimly aware of the clamour of voices saying her name and asking if she is all right.

And then the King's quiet tones cut through all the rest, "Help Lord Commander Brienne to the bed."

"No, I'm fine," she protests but, humiliatingly, she finds Maester Bertrand taking her left elbow and Podrick— _Podrick_!—taking her right and leading her to the King's bed.

"Let me examine you, Lord Commander," Maester Bertrand says as she reluctantly sits down on the side of the bed. "After all, it is at the King's order. You can't expect me to disobey a royal command."

"Yes, but I need to see to… everything!" Brienne exclaims, frustration making her voice increase in pitch and volume.

"Maester Bertrand will examine you," the King says, and then turns to address the others as well. "The rest of us will repair to my solar to confer. The Hand will take command of the City Watch and he will be ably assisted by Ser Podrick and the Kingsguard until Lord Commander Brienne returns."

Brienne sits there and watches with dull eyes as the others leave.

"I'd stay, but really you're better off with Maester Bertrand," Grand Maester Samwell mutters in his diffident way as he passes her.

Ser Podrick stoops to remove the dagger from Ser Lanard's neck and gets the guards to help him pull the spear from the dead girl's chest. He then commands them to have the bodies taken to the house of the dead, and, with an apologetic glance at Brienne, he leaves to follow the others to the King's solar. The guards drag the bodies from the room, the door closes a last time, and all is quiet.

"Let's start by getting this armour off you," Maester Bertrand says, his voice kind.

It's almost too much for Brienne. She doesn't want _kindness_. She wants to be doing her job. "All right," she says grudgingly, and pulls off her one remaining gauntlet. Twisting to release her cuirass _hurts_ , though. She feels bruised from one side of her middle to the other. Do bruises work that way? She almost asks, but stops herself. Let the maester decide what's wrong with her, if anything, without any help from her. He's the one wearing two silver links on his chain, after all.

Once she's down to her chemise, the maester has Brienne lie back on the bed. He lifts the bottom edge of her chemise and folds it back. There's a large angry red mark on her left side. It's going to blossom into quite a bruise in the next day or two.

"His Grace mentioned that you were hit quite hard while defending him from the intruder," the maester says. "This is where the blow landed?"

"Yes," Brienne says. "It was a spear to my side."

Maester Bertrand nods and holds a hand against her belly. Her stomach chooses that moment to do one of its somersaults. The maester clicks his tongue and removes his hand.

"How far along are you?" he asks, folding the end of her chemise back down into place.

"What do you mean?" Brienne lifts her head to look down at him. "How far am I along what?" she asks in puzzlement.

She can tell from his expression when realisation dawns, though what in the seven hells he thinks he's realised completely escapes her.

"Tell me, Lord Commander," he says slowly, clearly choosing his words as carefully as he can, "when did you last lie with a man?"

Brienne blinks, too surprised to be properly outraged by the impertinence. "How is that in any way important in treating possible injuries following a sword fight?" she asks tightly.

"I know it may not seem relevant, but it would help both of us if you would answer the question honestly."

He's tenacious, this young maester, she'll give him that. "You're saying I'm with child? Is that it? I can't be. I haven't… done _that_ since just after the Battle of Winterfell. That's more than six months ago, and look at me." She sweeps a hand down the length of her body, demonstrating the straight line of it, the lack of swelling at her belly.

 _Oh, the feel of_ his _hand and mouth on her that first time as he murmured indistinct endearments against her skin. She'd waited for him to lie, to name her "beauty", to reopen the old wound of the hurtful nickname and spoil it all. Instead, he'd kissed and caressed his way around her breasts until she was nearly incoherent with need of him, and then there was the tickle of his beard against her skin as he moved up over her shoulder, on and on until he paused to whisper, "Magnificent," into her ear, and she was lost. Lost, and happy to be so. Lost in him, and he in her._

"Ser Brienne," the maester says in a gentle voice that someone might use when addressing a child, or a simpleton. "It's important that you listen to me. You should know that some women don't show much, or at all. I've seen cases where even the woman herself did not know she was with child until she lay down with what she thought was a stomach upset and gave birth."

"And you think I'm one of those women?" Brienne asks scornfully. Perhaps it's not fair on the maester, who is clearly trying to do his job to the best of his ability, even though he's obviously mistaken.

It's better to sound scornful than fearful.

He doesn't answer, but asks another question of his own. "When did you last have your courses?"

"Months ago," Brienne says, "but that means very little. Most women's courses come every month, rising and falling as regularly as the tides. Mine never have. But then, I'm not like most women."

Maester Bertrand nods, but he doesn't attempt to answer that. Wise man. Instead, he asks, "Have you had any other symptoms? Tenderness or changes to your breasts, unexplained back ache, insomnia or fatigue, and, of course, sensitivity to strong odours or sickness in the mornings, especially in the early months?" He ticks them off on his fingers as he lists each one.

Brienne wants to deny experiencing any and all of these, but she can't deny them to herself even if she denies them to the maester. She doesn't believe it—she doesn't _want_ to believe it—but it would explain the months of terrible nausea, the lack of sleep, the tiredness, and even the back ache that she had attributed to a strained muscle.

"I've been sick to the stomach for months," she admits. "I've thrown up twice just today."

Maester Bertrand frowns in concern. "Still?"

She nods, forcing herself to remain outwardly calm as fear bubbles up and claws at her throat.

"That usually clears up after four or five months," is all he says, but Brienne can count as well as anyone. It's close to seven months since _he_ rode away into the winter night. "If you'll agree to lift your knees so that I can examine you properly?" Maester Bertrand asks, as delicately as he can—which is not very delicately at all. Brienne complies as the maester leans down to take a look. He must be taking a very good look, because the moment seems to go on and on. She tries very hard not to squirm in acute embarrassment. He reaches down to open his case, and then she feels something cold and metallic against her most private parts. Brienne yelps in surprise.

"My apologies. I forgot to warn that it would feel cold."

"What is it?" Brienne demands.

"Just an instrument for measuring, to see where things are up to."

He removes the instrument after a moment and returns it to its case, so there seems little point in making further protest.

Only one other person has ever gazed upon her female parts, or touched her there. Three people in the entire world, including Brienne herself. She doesn't intend to add to that number. Ever.

She sits up, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. "Thank you," she says. "You've given me much to think about." She slips on her gambeson, loosely lacing it at the front, and reaches for her cuirass. "Could you help me with my armour? That bruise on my side makes it slightly difficult for me to twist around and get this thing on without assistance."

The maester stares at her. "Lord Commander, I don't think you understand. You're going to have a baby."

"Yes, so you suggested," she agrees. "But I need to go to the King now. I don't know if you noticed, but someone tried to murder him tonight, and I'm the Lord Commander of his Kingsguard." There's that echo of _him_ again. She tries for a more moderate tone as she adds, "There is much that needs to be done in response, and none of it can wait. But I will think over what you've told me, I promise, as soon as I have a moment."

Maester Bertrand doesn't help her to dress. Instead, he lays a hand on her arm, stopping her. "Lord Commander Brienne, it's not a question of your finding a moment. There's no time left for thinking. You're going to have a baby. Right now. It's already on the way."

Brienne stares at him. She wants to deny it, but before she can utter a word pain rips through her belly again, like a giant's hand squeezing her, and all she can do is hang on for dear life and try to ride it—the contraction, for that's what it is—through. She grits her teeth. She will not cry out. Over that, at least, she has some control.

When it's over and she can speak again, she looks up at the maester. He's not wearing an expression of victory, or even "I told you so", but then, he hasn't won. She's been defeated by her own body.

"Well, I can't do it here," she says, not trying to keep the petulance out of her voice. "Not in the King's chamber, in his _bed_."

"Too late," Maester Bertrand says. "The babe has decided for us. It's coming here and now."

Brienne looks at him, and sees only truth in his eyes. Truth, and sympathy. She looks away, down at the beautiful blue and gold brocade coverlet that's already stained with blood from the King's tunic.

She takes a deep breath and looks up at the maester again. "All right then," she says with resignation, "let's get this over and done with. But first, help me get this bed cover out of the way."


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just in case it wasn't obvious at the end of the last chapter: childbirth coming right up!

_This isn't happening._ The thought goes round and round in Brienne's mind. It can't be real. It's some sort of especially painful nightmare.

_It's too soon._ Stark terror cuts through her like a bolt of lightning. It's only seven months. And then that thought goes round and round as well until one chases the other, round and round and round and round in a never ending circle of fear and disbelief.

_This isn't happening. It's too soon. This isn't happening. It's too soon. This isn't happening!_

"I beg to differ," Maester Bertrand says.

Brienne opens her eyes and finds him smiling wryly at her from the bedside. Only then does she realise that she must have spoken at least some of those words out loud. But the problem with opening her eyes, of course, is that now she has to face the pain directly. In between the contractions, it feels a little like being covered from head to toe in bruises and unable to sleep after a battle, in the sense that no position in bed is comfortable so you toss and turn and finally get up and pace.

Well, it's a little like that, multiplied by infinity.

Brienne sits up and swings her legs over the side of the bed. "I need to get up. I can't stay still. Don't stop me!" she warns the maester.

"Do whatever feels best," Maester Bertrand says, holding out his arm for her to take.

"Nothing feels best!" she roars in frustration, and pain. Can't forget about the pain. She wishes to all the Seven that she could forget it, for even a second or two. She ignores the proffered arm, and strides across the room—or at least, that's what she intends. Instead, she hobbles two steps and then-

"Arrrrrrgh!" The giant that had closed his fingers around her belly earlier has her in the grip of both hands now.

Maester Bertrand is beside her in an instant. "Breathe out but try not to push. Not quite yet. It won't be long now."

Brienne has his arm in a death grip that she doesn't relax as she glares at him. And she screams, a long, drawn-out wail of pain and despair.

She'd intended not to cry out, not to make a sound. That promise to herself had lasted barely five minutes once her labour started in earnest. She's a warrior, a knight, the Lord Commander of the Seven-times damned Kingsguard. She's fought for and against both northerners and southerners, Baratheons and Starks. She's faced a bear and a Hound in single combat. She's battled a shadow monster and an army of the dead. And nothing has prepared her for this.

Of course, the situation with the bear hadn't ended up being single combat. But… that doesn't matter now. Nothing matters but the task at hand.

Maester Bertrand guides her back to the bed. "Let me take another look," he says, helping her lie back against the pillows.

There's a knock at the door—fortunately before Brienne has lifted the hem of her chemise and bent her knees.

Maester Bertrand goes to the door, and opens it a little way.

Grand Maester Samwell pokes his head in the door. "Bertrand," he says, "oh, and Lord Commander Brienne," he adds, glancing over at her. One hand slips past the door and he gives her a little wave.

"Yes, Grand Maester? What can I do for you?" Maester Bertrand is in no way impolite. No one could ever accuse him of that. And yet there's a tiny hint of impatience in his voice as he addresses the Grand Maester.

"Well, I was just wondering- That is, we were wondering, Lord Tyrion and Ser Podrick and I- And His Grace, of course, though he didn't really…" Grand Maester Samwell's voice trails off. He appears uncertain as to how to proceed.

"Yes, Grand Maester?" Maester Bertrand says again.

"As I said, we were wondering… well, what's going on in here? We've heard a lot of screaming," he adds, with an apologetic glance at Brienne.

Maester Bertrand looks over at her as well. This is a question for her to answer as she sees fit.

"There's not much point in trying to keep it a secret. Everyone will know soon enough anyway. I'm in the middle of giving birth," she tells Grand Maester Samwell baldly.

"You're having a baby?" he squeaks.

"So it appears," Brienne says. "I trust that explains the screaming to your satisfaction?"

Grand Maester Samwell blinks. "Oh. Well. I mean, yes. Of course. And congratulations. Or should that be felicitat-"

"There will be plenty of time for well wishing later, Grand Maester," Maester Bertrand cuts in, firmly, though still politely. "Right now we need to get this baby birthed."

"Yes, yes, of course," the Grand Maester says.

Another contraction seizes Brienne before she can contribute any more to the conversation. It's the fiercest one yet, two giants' worth this time. She bites down on her hand to stop herself from screaming, so hard that she breaks the skin, and then it's all for nothing anyway when she clenches her hands into fists and the scream breaks free.

"I'll leave you to it," Grand Maester Samwell says hastily, and tries to close the door.

Maester Bertrand stops him. "If you could send to the kitchens for more hot water and towels, Grand Maester? I think we'll be needing them before too long."

"I'll see to that, of course," Grand Maester Samwell says.

The door closes swiftly, and Maester Bertrand hurries back to Brienne's side. She's no longer screaming, but she's panting like a dog and sweating like a pig, and even though the latest contraction is over, the pain just. Does. Not. Stop. She's wondered, sometimes, in her more morbid moments, what it would feel like to die on the battlefield, belly sliced open and guts sliding out. She had guessed that it would be painful beyond bearing without a doubt, but she never really knew what those words meant until today.

However painful such a death might be, though, it would have to be quicker and more merciful than this.

She lets her legs fall open as Maester Bertrand moves around to check the progress of her labour, and she feels that instrument of his against her skin again. It's quaintly amusing to her now that she was embarrassed the first time he examined her like this. That seems like another lifetime ago, back when she had dignity.

"It's time," Maester Bertrand says. "When the next one comes, I want you to push as hard as you can."

"And until then I just lie here?" Brienne asks. She's never felt more useless in her life.

"Only if you wish to," Maester Bertrand replies, as unruffled as ever. Does nothing faze him?

"I'm going to get up," Brienne declares, and suits actions to words. Perhaps she moves too quickly, or perhaps her body has simply had enough, because as soon as she gets to her feet she's gripped not by a contraction but by the familiar nausea, and then she's retching, splattering the contents of her stomach in great heaves across the floor.

When it's over, she grabs the bedpost. She's trembling, so much so that her teeth are chattering and her legs feel boneless. She really truly wants to cry. Instead, she purses her quivering lips. It's not _fair_. Other women, _normal_ women, don't have to suffer nausea like this. Not after the first months. But it just won't let up for her, not even when she's in the midst of giving birth. The maester had seemed concerned when she told him that she was still throwing up after seven months. Dear gods, _only_ seven months. _It's too soon! It's too soon! It's too soon!_

And then Maester Bertrand is there, holding a cup of blessedly cool water to her lips. Brienne takes a mouthful and swills it round in her mouth before spitting it out on the floor to add to the pool of vomit. She takes another, longer draught of the water. It feels like liquid relief going down her throat.

"Not too much at once," Maester Bertrand warns, removing the cup.

Brienne wants to protest, but what's the point? She half-falls back down onto the bed, hand still on the bedpost as she sits with her legs over the side.

Maester Bertrand gives her the cup of water, and presses a cool, damp towel to her forehead. She sips gratefully as he arranges a small mountain of pillows high against the bedhead. He takes the cup from her again, but only so he can help her to lie back against the pillows, half-sitting now with her knees raised and her legs well apart. He returns the cup to her and she takes another sip of water. Despite the awkward position, for a few seconds, she feels almost properly human again, and she gives him a wan smile.

And then it hits her, the worst one yet, and the cup slips from her fingers and tumbles to the floor where it smashes.

"Push!" Maester Bertrand says from somewhere closeby.

The need to push is almost overwhelming. Brienne screws her eyes closed, grits her teeth and _pushes_. It feels like she's trying to shit a melon. There's no way in the world it will fit through.

But, "Good, good, you're doing really well, exactly right," is what she hears from Maester Bertrand. She opens her eyes to find him smiling encouragingly at her. "All of that physical activity you knights engage in is coming in useful."

They wait together like comrades in arms for the next contraction. it doesn’t take long. It arrives, and her muscles clench, _everything_ clenches, and Brienne pushes with all of her considerable might.

"I can see the top of the head," Maester Bertrand tells her. "Don't let up."

It's still not done.

Another contraction grips her, or is it still the same one? Everything is blending together, pain and numbness, reality and fantasy, movement and stillness. Time and timelessness. Forwards and back. She doesn't know which is which any more.

_It's wonderful to watch you wrestle with these dilemmas. Which will she choose?_

Brienne goes cold. And hot. That's not the maester's voice. Or her own. There's only one voice it could ever be. Only one voice that's ever said those words to her.

_Or maybe she won't make a choice and just be stuck here forever,_ the voice mocks.

Is it just a memory? Or is it something more? It doesn't really matter. She knows what she has to do. There's no going back. The only way is forward.

She pushes, and pushes, and pushes, until she feels like she's being split in two from the cunt up, and then the melon slides past her nether lips and she's free of it.

"The head is out," says Maester Bertrand. "A few more pushes like that should do it."

Brienne welcomes the next contraction, and rides it like a wave, and the baby slips from her body between one breath and the next.

It's over.

_Magnificent,_ whispers the voice, no longer mocking.

"Well done," Maester Bertrand says.

And then there's quiet, blessed quiet, and peace for a moment or two as Brienne heaves air into her lungs and the maester busies himself with cutting the cord and doing something with a towel. Brienne is just beginning to think that it's too quiet and feeling the first stirrings of panic when a thin wail cuts the silence.

Brienne relaxes back against the pillows.

The maester's fist presses down against her abdomen, and Brienne feels the clench of another contraction, far less dramatic than the ones she's just survived. She doesn't need to be told to push this time. She follows the lead of her body, grits her teeth and pushes, and a moment later the afterbirth is delivered.

It's really over now. She's made it safely to the other side.

"Meet your daughter," Maester Bertrand says, and lays the tiniest baby Brienne has ever seen against her chest. Tiny and perfect.

A daughter. Brienne stares down at her in wonderment. She's been so focused on getting through the birth that somehow it hadn't really occurred to her that the result would be a child. A real, living baby. Her _daughter_.

_Our daughter._

It’s _his_ voice again. Brienne swallows hard, and she has to squeeze her eyes tightly shut for a moment. When she opens them again, she finds blue eyes staring up at her. The baby's slightly crumpled pink face is frowning in what looks like extreme surprise.

_You and me both,_ Brienne thinks.

"Let me wash the birth fluids off her properly, and wrap her up warmly, and then I'll bring her straight back," Maester Bertrand says, as he dips a towel in the bath waters.

He comes over and carefully lifts the baby from Brienne's arms.

Brienne feels bereft. "She's so tiny," she says. A frail seven months child. A sudden chill of fear grips her. "Will she be all right?"

The maester lays the baby down on the bed and starts to gently wipe her clean. "She seems to be doing well so far. There's no problem with her breathing. That's always the greatest concern when a babe arrives early."

"That was my fault, wasn't it?" Brienne says, feeling sick to her stomach all over again. "If I hadn't been involved in that fight today, if the intruder hadn't landed that blow to my belly…" She hadn't known that she was endangering anyone but herself at the time, of course. But she should have known.

"There's no way to tell for sure, but I don't think it would have made much difference."

"You don't?"

Maester Bertrand wraps the baby in a clean towel and returns her to Brienne's arms. The feeling of relief is palpable as the baby settles in against her breast. Brienne watches her sigh a tiny sigh with her rosebud lips, and feels as though she could melt with tenderness right then and there.

"You were experiencing the nausea and vomiting right up until today. When that continues past the early stages, it usually tells us that there's something not quite right with the pregnancy."

Brienne looks up sharply. "Something's not quite right with her?"

"Don't worry," the maester says. "She seems strong, even though she's smaller than is ideal. Your body and the baby were simply not existing together as happily as they should. It happens, though it's something we don't quite understand. An early delivery is not unknown in those circumstances."

Of course her body would not exist happily with a babe inside it, Brienne thinks with a tired sigh. She never knew how to be a woman, even before she wearied of constantly failing at it and became a warrior instead, so it's no wonder that neither she nor her body had the slightest clue about bearing a child.

And yet—she looks down at the baby in her arms and can't stop a small proud smile—somehow she and her body had managed the important bit just the same.

The maester sets to work at the part of her that's been at the business end of giving birth, first taking a small glass bottle from his leather case and dabbing something against her abused flesh. It feels sharp, almost like alcohol, for a fleeting moment, and then everything goes blessedly numb.

Maester Bertrand returns the bottle to his case and takes out what looks very like a seamstress's needle and thread. "You need a few stitches, just to hold things together while the torn flesh heals."

"I feel as if I've survived a battle," Brienne says.

"Haven't you?" the maester says, and Brienne has to agree that he is right.

It's odd, feeling the needle going in without any accompanying pain, but soon it's over. The maester uses a small knife to tear a towel into strips, and folds a couple against her nether regions.

"There will be bleeding for a while," he warns. "It's nothing unusual. Make sure to replace the padding after a few hours, or before that if it becomes soaked."

The baby nuzzles against Brienne's breast through the thin fabric of her chemise, and snuffles softly. Brienne strokes a fingertip very gently along the baby's soft cheek and makes soothing noises. How does she know to do that? The baby continues to nuzzle, as if seeking.

"Looking at the determination of this young lady, I fancy she was simply impatient to enter the world," Maester Bertrand adds. "Do you want to try giving her her first meal?"

There's a knock at the door before Brienne can answer. The maester goes to open it, and then steps back to let a serving girl enter. She's carrying two pails of steaming water. Another serving girl hurries in behind her, carrying a pile of towels so high that she can barely peer over the top. Then a third serving girl follows the first two, laden with sheets and other bedding. And then a _fourth_ serving girl appears at the door, armed with mops, several scrubbing brushes, cakes of soap and cleaning rags.

Brienne watches the procession of servants with some bemusement. "Perhaps we should wait a few minutes before trying," she says to the maester as he returns to her side, nodding down at the baby in her arms.

Behind the serving girls comes a tall, grey-haired male servant, walking at a stately pace and carrying a covered tray, which he places on the King's private dining table by the window, and then comes to bow before Brienne. "His Grace sends his compliments, Lord Commander, and requests that you make yourself comfortable in this chamber tonight. A light meal awaits you on the table, should you feel hungry. When you are ready, Marya will make up the bed with fresh sheets." He glances at the girl holding the bedding, who tries to curtsey without dropping anything. She fails at the curtsey, tripping over her own feet, but somehow manages not to let anything fall to the floor. The man very briefly closes his eyes, as though pushed beyond endurance.

"Thank you," Brienne manages. This servant exudes more dignity than her _father_ , the Evenstar of Tarth.

The servant bows again, and leaves the room. Brienne can almost feel all the serving girls heaving a collective sigh of relief at his departure as they swirl into a flurry of activity. The first serving girl sets down the pails of water. The second serving girl deposits the pile of towels on the table beside the covered tray. The third serving girl, Marya, sets the bedding down on a chair beside the bed, and then the fourth girl distributes mops and scrubbing brushes. Three of the girls set to work cleaning up the various messes on the floor, while Marya waits beside the bed.

Maester Bertrand helps Brienne over to a cushioned chair by the hearth, and she settles there with the baby in her arms. The baby makes an unhappy little sound, and Brienne finds herself gazing down into those so-blue eyes again.

"Would you like to try feeding her again?" the maester asks.

The high back of the chair is to the servants. No one but the maester can see—and he's already seen everything. Brienne nods, but she tenses. She'll probably do it wrong. She's not a natural mother. She never expected to be a mother at all. It's still laughable to think that she's anyone's mother. But now this tiny baby depends on her for food and clothing, for protection and care, for… everything.

Maester Bertrand takes the baby for a moment while Brienne slips one side of her chemise down over her shoulder and frees her right breast. She takes the baby back, settles her in the crook of her arm, takes her breast and guides the nipple to the tiny mouth and…

It's like nothing Brienne has ever felt before, this _connection_ as the baby sucks contentedly at the breast. The bond she feels is deep, primitive and satisfying in a way that she can't put into words. She sits there, aware of little but the soft tug at her breast as she gazes over the baby's head at the fire dancing behind the grate. She feels warm and complete—and so, so tired.

After a while, her nipple slips from the baby's mouth. Brienne moves her chemise back into place, uncaring about the wet spots from the milk. The baby snuggles in against her and the tiny mouth opens in a yawn. Then the blue eyes close.

Brienne looks down at the sleeping baby. "You are mine and I'll protect you," she whispers against the little head covered in a few downy wisps of blonde hair.  "Always."

She jumps some time—a minute? An hour? —later when Maester Bertrand touches her arm, saying, "The bed is ready, if you wish to return there."

The baby stirs, and makes a sound that's both cranky and tired. Brienne hushes her, telling her that everything is all right and, remarkably, it appears that it is, as the baby quiets.

Brienne gets up carefully, so as not to disturb the child again, and realises that they're alone. When did the servants leave? There is no trace of blood or sick or even smashed pottery on the floor, and the bed is made up fresh and clean, showing no sign that it has ever been used for birthing. A fresh chemise—one of Brienne's own, for who else would own one that would fit her?—is laid out on the bed.

Brienne lays the baby on the bed, covering her with a number of tiny blankets that the serving girls left behind and arranging several pillows on either side to keep her safe, and strips. She leaves the stained chemise in a pile on the floor and slips the clean one over her head. Less than a minute later, she's tucked up in bed with her baby beside her.

Maester Bertrand has been inspecting the contents of the covered tray. "Are you hungry?" he asks, turning to her.

Brienne considers the question. She ate a large meal only hours ago, but much of it ended up on the floor during the birth. She feels… peckish. "Perhaps. Is there something simple and easy to eat under there?"

"Porridge?" the maester suggests.

A tiny laugh bubbles up in Brienne's throat. There had been porridge on her breakfast tray this morning. She hadn't been able to stomach it then, but it appears she will be eating it today after all.

"Porridge it is," she says.

The porridge is no longer hot, but it's still warm, and the cream and honey that accompany it turn it into something more than simple peasant fare. Before she really knows what she's doing, Brienne has eaten it all.

Once she's done, Maester Bertrand takes the empty bowl and spoon away, and comes back to the bed.

"I'll leave you now, Lord Commander," he says, and with a start Brienne realises that this is the first time he's addressed her by her title since this—they—began.

_Lord Commander_. Now that's a whole new bucket of worms. One that she's not going to think about right now. It's one thing that can wait until morning.

"Thank you," she says, and is surprised to find that she's regarding him through the shimmer of tears. "I wouldn't have got through that without you. I didn't even realise what was happening until you told me."

He smiles. "It was my duty and my pleasure to be of assistance to you at this time, Lord Commander. I wish you joy of your daughter."

"Thank you," she says again.

He inclines his head. "Good night, Lord Commander. I trust you will both sleep well."

He turns to leave, but Brienne stops him just before he reaches the door. "Maester Bertrand," she says, "could you send Ser Podrick to me, if the King can spare him?"

"Of course," he says. And then he's gone.

Brienne lies back against the pillows. Now that it's all over and the baby is asleep, she finds herself thinking about the world outside this room once again. What has been happening while she's been stuck in here?

She half-expects that she won't see Podrick until the morning. He's probably far too busy scouring the Red Keep for any clue about what went on here in this room tonight before she went into labour to come to her now. But less than five minutes later, Ser Podrick knocks on the door and announces himself, and enters the room.

"Ser! My lady! Lord Commander!" he says as he strides over to the bed, and suddenly he's no longer a knight of the Kingsguard but once again the boy squire she inherited unwillingly from Tyrion Lannister.

"Good evening, Podrick," she says with a sternness that she does not feel.

Ser Podrick stops beside the bed as if spellbound as he catches sight of the sleeping child. "You really… I wasn't sure… I mean, well…," he tries. And then, "You really did," he finishes lamely.

"Yes, I did," Brienne agrees. "Is there anything else you'd like to say on the subject?"

"She's beautiful," Ser Podrick says simply, and once again Brienne finds herself blinking away tears.

This really has to stop!

"Thank you," she says. "I think she is, too."

There's silence between them for a moment, and Brienne can see a thousand questions hovering on Podrick's tongue, but he knows better than to ask a single one of them. At last Brienne says, "Bring a chair over here and tell me everything that has been happening since the King left this room."

And so Podrick does. "Things have not gone as well as we hoped," he begins.

"When do they ever?" Brienne asks, and they share a wry smile.

"Ser Willem and Ser Bronn surprised two Unsullied and another man on the beach that His Grace told us of. The three men attacked, and unfortunately Ser Willem and Ser Bronn had no choice but to kill them."

"Damn," Brienne says. "I was hoping we'd get them to talk."

"Ser Willem and Ser Bronn also discovered the body of Rufus near the end of the passageway leading out to the beach."

"Rufus?"

"His Grace's body servant."

It's another blow, but not a huge surprise to Brienne, after what the King said earlier, and she says as much to Podrick. "But the question still remains: was the man helping or hindering the intruders when he was killed?"

"It's a good question," Podrick admits. "We don't know."

"And what of the man who scaled the tower and tried to kill His Grace?"

"He refuses to speak. So far. Lord Tyrion says that he will leave him to think over his options alone in the cold and dark of a black cell, and with no food in his belly, and question him again in the morning. We checked the base of the tower and saw how he ascended. It appears that he used ropes and also spikes that he drove into the cracks between the stones that make up the wall of the tower to create handholds and footholds."

_Sinking his claws in like a cat climbing a tree,_ Brienne thinks. "And you've found nothing else of note within the Red Keep?"

"Nothing, Lord Commander. We've given up the search for tonight and are waiting to see what daylight may reveal."

That will be too late, Brienne knows, but it's not as if they have a choice.

"There is one thing, though," Podrick says.

"Yes?" Brienne asks at once.

"That spear, the one that I pulled out of the body of that poor girl."

"Yes?" Brienne asks again.

"His Grace says it's been touched by magic."

Brienne's eyes open wide at that. "Indeed," she says. It explains why Oathkeeper didn't leave a mark on it, but the explanation leaves her even more troubled than before. Someone who knows magic is involved in this somehow. "Double the guard on the King's qu-" She looks around and remembers where she is. "Double the guard on the King tonight and-"

The baby stirs, making little snuffling noises, and Brienne's eyes fly instantly to her.

"It's already done," Podrick assures her. "What's her name?" he adds, looking over at the baby himself.

Brienne tears her gaze away from the baby. "Her name?" she says in surprise, and immediately feels like the greatest idiot alive. She's the child's mother, so she gets to choose. The baby cannot simply remain 'the baby' for the rest of her life. "I'm still thinking about it," she adds, trying to make it sound like she was already considering names before Podrick asked.

"I'd suggest 'Podrick', but she really doesn't look like a Podrick," Podrick—Ser Podrick—says with a grin.

"No, she doesn't," Brienne says reprovingly, but lets the hint of a smile touch the corners of her mouth. "Is there anything else I should know tonight?"

"That's most of it, Lord Commander. His Grace has retired to the queen's rooms—or what were formerly known as the queen's rooms—for the night, and Ser Willem and Ser Diarmid are in attendance."

"Ser Diarmid is no longer with Ser Roland Fossoway?" Brienne is sure she gave orders for him to stay with the erstwhile commander of the City Watch.

"No, Lord Commander. Lord Tyrion questioned Ser Roland and afterwards gave orders for him to be taken to a cell."

"And you don't know what Lord Tyrion discovered from him?"

"No, Lord Commander."

Brienne huffs, chafing at being confined to this room. She needs to speak with the Hand. If only she were able to get up and dress in her armour and stride over to the Tower of the Hand and...

Her eyelids droop with weariness. She leans back against the pillows, willing herself not to simply slump, almost overwhelmed by a wave of exhaustion.

"I should leave you to sleep, Lord Commander," Ser Podrick says, getting to his feet.

It's a measure of Brienne's weariness that she does not rebuke him for taking that decision out of her hands. "Report back to me in the morning, as soon as anything comes to light," she says.

"Of course, Lord Commander," he says. "Sleep well, both of you." And then, to Brienne's utter surprise, he leans down and places a kiss on the crown of the baby's head.

He straightens, and strides away before Brienne can say another word.

Once the door is closed behind him, she really does slump against the pillows. She's exhausted. She looks down at the baby, who is once again fast asleep. It seems like an excellent notion.

Brienne blows out the branch of candles by the bed, and only the dying flames from the fireplace are left to light the room.

"Good night," she says to the baby. "I promise I'll find you a name. But not just yet." She yawns halfway through the last word.

Brienne feels bruised and battered, and there's simply no position she can find that could really be called comfortable, but right now it does not matter. She moves a few pillows around and lies down on her side, facing the baby, and sleeps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I suck at estimating how long my stories are going to be. I'm PRETTY sure the next chapter will be the last one, though. Probably.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the change in rating. There's a flashback. ;)

Brienne awakes, but not to the usual darkness. It's still night, as it usually is when she awakes, but there's a fire burning in the hearth—something her small cell in the White Sword Tower does not possess—and the bed she's lying in is much larger than her bed and…

The baby.

A tender smile on her lips, Brienne props her head up on one elbow and looks over the fortification of pillows she'd built.

And goes cold. The baby isn't there. The tiny blankets lie flat and empty.

She sits up, scanning the room, instantly on the alert, and goes even colder. There's a woman standing by the fire, a stranger, and she's holding the baby in her arms.

Brienne is out of bed in a heartbeat. Oathkeeper is within hand's reach by the bed, right where she left it. In barely more than another heartbeat, Brienne has her sword up in front of her. She assumes the plough guard position, and advances on the woman, sword point aimed straight at her chest.

"Put the child down, slowly and carefully, and you will live," she says, with a nod toward the chair where, mere hours ago, she'd nursed her baby for the first time.

The woman squeaks, and visibly trembles as she lays the baby carefully on the chair. Even in the firelight, Brienne can see that her face has gone white as milk. It appears she's not trying to steal the baby, then, but given that they've already had one unwelcome intruder in this room tonight, Brienne is not going to take even the slightest chance. Particularly when it involves her child.

"Who are you, and what are you doing here?" Brienne demands, not lowering her sword.

"My lady, I am Anera, my lady. I help Maester Bertrand sometimes. He sent me to keep an eye on the babe, my lady," the woman gabbles, still trembling as she bobs a curtsey.

Brienne lowers her sword, "I'm not a la-" She stops. Given that she's just become a mother, perhaps it's not unreasonable for the nursemaid—or whatever sort of nurse or maid she is—to assume that Brienne is, in fact, a lady. "Call me Lord Commander," she says.

"Yes, Lord Commander," Anera says. She's not trembling so much now, and a little colour is returning to her cheeks.

"You're not a wet nurse?" Brienne asks, though she's fairly sure she already knows the answer to that question. This woman is not in the first blush of youth, or even the second blush of youth. She's wearing a long apron over her dress and her mouse brown hair is scraped back tightly in a no-nonsense knot at the back of her head.

"No, my l- Lord Commander. I have some knowledge of the healing arts, and experience in nursemaiding for babes who arrive before their time. Maester Bertrand asked me to come to you, and keep watch over your baby, at least for tonight. You didn't answer my knock, so I didn't wish to disturb you while I saw to the child."

Brienne nods, and at last lowers Oathkeeper. Some of the tension goes out of Anera and her shoulders relax.

"Next time, disturb me," Brienne says forcefully, letting out a long breath of relief.

"Yes, Lord Commander," she says. And then: "Might I suggest that you allow me to look at your stitches?"

Brienne is about to ask why, when she becomes aware of wetness down below and something dribbling down her leg. She looks down, and isn't greatly surprised to see that it's blood.

"You made some sharp and sudden movements. They may have torn the stitches," Anera explains, unnecessarily.

"Very well," Brienne says, laying Oathkeeper carefully back beside the bed. But she doesn't lie down and open her legs for inspection. Instead, she goes over to the chair, trying and failing not to hurry, and picks up the baby.

The baby is wearing a long linen gown with a lace hem, which is an improvement on the towel that she was previously wrapped in. Big blue eyes look up at her. Brienne looks back, and then holds the child close against her breast. She feels sick to the stomach. She will have to be—she _will_ be—more careful in future. From now on, there'll be a guard at the door.

The baby whimpers, and Brienne releases the tightness of her hold just as the tiny girl opens her mouth, but instead of the full-fledged cry that Brienne is half-expecting, what emerges is a thin, high-pitched squeal. The little face is red with fury and unhappiness, but that's not reflected in the volume of her cry.

Brienne stares at her, not sure what to do. Up until now, the baby has been reasonably tranquil. Apparently, that's not a permanent state.

"Shush, it's all right," she says, as she did before, but this time the baby's having none of it. Her cry just gets shriller.

"It's because she's come early," Anera says, appearing by Brienne's side. "The cry, I mean. It will get more like a real, full-throated baby's cry as she grows."

"What's wrong with her?" Brienne asks, feeling stupid and helpless. She's not cut out for this. Swordplay is so much more straightforward. Battling an army of the dead is so much more straightforward. At least she's good at combat.

"I've changed her, so it isn't that," Anera says. "She's hungry, most likely." She shoos Brienne over towards the bed, the woman's fright at having Oathkeeper pointed at her in deadly earnest apparently quite forgotten.

In next to no time, Brienne finds herself lying back against the pillows, a much quieter baby suckling at her breast, while Anera tut-tuts at the state of Brienne's stitches and sets about fixing them with needle and fine silk thread. Once she's done, she lays fresh padding against the poor, torn flesh, and pulls the covers back up over Brienne's legs.

"No more of that sort of thing until the stitches come out, and not even then, at least for a while after," Anera says firmly. "We can't have you bleeding all over the place—and most especially this little one can't have you bleeding all over the place. She needs her mother in one piece."

Brienne nods, just stopping herself from replying, _Yes, ma'am._ Instead, she asks, "What time is it?"

"The bells struck four just after I arrived here, Lord Commander," Anera replies. "They haven't yet struck the half hour."

Good. It's not impossibly early. Not for everyone in the Red Keep, anyway. "Go to the Kingsguard standing guard outside the chamber next to this one, and tell him to have a guard put on the door to this room as well until the baby and I move to our own quarters," Brienne tells her. "Then, send to the Tower of the Hand. If there is light to be seen in the window of the Hand's own chamber, request that he come to me at his earliest convenience."

"Yes, Lord Commander," Anera says, and curtseys before leaving the room, but there's something about the set of her shoulders and the stiffness of her departing back that gives Brienne the distinct impression that Anera isn't used to being treated as a messenger girl.

Well, there isn't much Brienne can do about that at this hour, and none of her errands can wait.

The baby bats at Brienne's breast with one tiny hand, and Brienne looks down into eyes that are big and blue and so like her own.

_"What are you doing?" she'd asked **him** that first morning, as they lay side by side, naked under the furs in her bed at Winterfell._

_"Looking into your beautiful big blue eyes," he'd replied._

_She squirmed, and lowered her lashes, self-conscious._

_"What? I'm not allowed to look at your eyes this morning?" he asked, and there was that devilish gleam in his green eyes that she knew only too well, had learned to know and dread in their travels years ago, except that there was a warmth to it now that had never been there before. "Last night you didn't complain when I looked at your c-mmph."_

_She launched herself at him in desperation, and closed her mouth over his before he could finish uttering the word. He didn't try to pull away or protest at such treatment. The kiss softened and deepened, and by the end of it she was lying on her back and moaning into his mouth as his fingers proved even more devilish than his eyes, stroking and pressing and coaxing a reaction out of the place that she hadn't wanted him to name._

_He lifted his head as she gasped out her release. "You do have beautiful eyes, you know," he said, sincere now, in a way that made her heart clench in her chest._

_"So people have said," she managed. "My only good feature."_

_"Oh, I wouldn't say that," he said, and the devilish gleam was back, twice as wicked as before. He rolled onto his side and drew her to him so she could feel him, the hot hard length of him, pushing up against her thigh. "It isn't your eyes that are doing this to me. Or not just your eyes. All I have to do is touch you, and I want everything. All of you." His voice cracked a little on the last word. There was only warmth left in his eyes. Warmth and heat and naked honesty, and he shuddered when she took him in hand._

_She closed her hand loosely around him, around his **cock** , and slipped her fingers up and then down along his hot flesh, stroking slowly as she watched his face for reaction, every little blink and tremor, every tiny gasp, until he moaned in something like agony—but better than that, she thought, so much better—and his hand closed over hers._

_"Stop!" he commanded, and she tried to pull her hand away, as if burnt, but he was already urging her up on top of him, grasping his cock so that the head of it pushed up against her most secret place._

_She lowered herself slowly. He was large, huge, stretching her until he filled her, filled the aching emptiness that she'd pretended not to notice in all the years she'd been alone, and then she was rocking back and forth, meeting him again and again as he thrust up into her. She leaned down to kiss him, hands braced against the pillows on either side of his head, and his hand found her breast in turn, rolling the nipple until it was a hard little peak, and then clutching at the small, soft mound as he rumbled his enjoyment of her against her mouth._

_She tore her lips from his, lifting herself back up, needing to see him as well as feel and taste. He arched beneath her, the muscles of his shoulders straining, his neck a long, taut line as he threw his head back, hair shining gold and silver in the pale morning light. He looked so beautiful, like a great male animal in his prime, that Brienne felt the pull of it, of him, streak through her like a bolt of lightning, from the lump catching in her throat all the way down to her, yes, to her **cunt**._

_Her climax took her by surprise, coming out of nowhere, like climbing a gently rolling hill only to reach a mountaintop without warning, and then she was falling, falling as she quaked and cried out at the shocking intensity of it. But he was there to catch her, to hold her to him, to keep her safe until she opened her eyes and found him looking up at her, the grin on his face so self-satisfied and smug that she had no choice but to lean down and kiss him again._

_It was easier after that. For her, anyway. She rode him lazily, then harder as his thrusts became faster and more erratic. And then he stilled, clutched at her hip, thrust up once, hard, and she could feel him pulsing inside her as he cried out, a deep bass roar of a sound. She watched his face, his lashes fanned against his cheek as he closed his eyes against whatever he was feeling, avidly drinking in the sight of everything he could not hide in that moment. She coloured a little, wondering, then, if maybe this was an intimacy too far, an intrusion into something that was still too private to be shared, to gaze on him like that._

_But then he opened his eyes, still gasping, and reached up to touch her cheek._

_"Oh, darling," he whispered, an endearment he might have used to anyone, any lover, except that he was looking straight into her eyes as he said it. **Darling**. She'd never thought to be anyone's darling, or anyone's anything. "You really do have the most beautiful eyes."_

_Gazing back at him, never wanting to take her eyes off him again, she could have said the same to him._

A single fat tear drops, and lands on the baby's forehead, and she makes a small fussy sort of sound in protest.

"Oh, darling," Brienne says, "I'm sorry," as she wipes it away.

The blue eyes stare up at her, as if they can see into her soul—though that could just be that the baby can't yet focus properly.

Will her eyes stay blue, like her mother's, or will they change, turn gr- some other colour as she gets a little older? Brienne imagines having to see _his_ eyes, every day. It would be like a little stab to her heart, every time. On the other hand, it would mean that she would _get_ to see his eyes every day, a reminder of the sweetest days of her life.

No. "You'll have your own eyes," she tells the baby. "Not his or mine. Yours, whatever colour they turn out to be."

She finds herself searching for more resemblance then, despite what she's just said, but there isn't much to be found. The baby has a baby's non-descript—perfect—little nose and mouth, and her head is a slightly squashed sort of oval, her cheeks soft and the cheekbones not yet prominent, if that's what they're going to be. The only feature of note, apart from the baby's eyes, is the hint of a rather determined little chin, but that doesn't tell her much.

Not yet.

All of that will wait. The child will be who she will be. All she needs is a name. And right now that's the hardest part. Every other mother in Westeros would no doubt have spent months going over possible names, consulting with the father and arguing fondly about the merits of this name or that, and have one all picked out by now. Brienne, on the other hand, had confidently expected at this time yesterday never to be a mother at all.

Family names are the obvious ones to consider. _His_ mother was Joanna. It's not a bad name, except that Joanna Lannister was _her_ mother, too. _No_ , nothing Lannister. This is Brienne's child. There's Lady Cassana, her own mother, who she doesn't remember well enough to picture, or Arianne and Alysanne, her sisters who died in the cradle. No, none of them feels like the right fit. Maybe something to do with a place would work better. She looks down at the baby, and thinks about who she is, about what has gone into the making of her. Mother from the Stormlands, father from the Westerlands, born in King's Landing and conceived in the North.

And then a name crosses her mind, stops halfway, and settles there.

Yes. It's exactly right.

Brienne smiles down at the baby. "I know what your name is," she tells her.

The baby gurgles happily.

There's a soft knock at the door, and Anera enters the room.

"Is the Hand awake?" Brienne asks.

"Yes, Lord Commander," Anera says, coming over to hold the baby while Brienne hastily slips her chemise back over her breast. "Lord Tyrion is waiting outside. Shall I take her while you speak with him?"

"No," Brienne says, "leave her with me."

Anera nods. Once Brienne is settled, with a large navy blue shawl around her shoulders and the baby in her arms, Anera goes back to the door and throws it open. "The Hand of the King, Lord Commander," she announces, stepping back to allow Tyrion Lannister to enter the room.

"Couldn't this wait until morning?" he complains as he stumps across the room and takes the seat beside the bed. "I might have been just drifting off to sleep for all you know."

"You weren't," says Brienne, with certainty.

"No, I wasn't," the Hand agrees, and then, turning to Anera, adds curtly, "Leave us."

Anera nods her assent, but then casts a speaking look at Brienne.

"Yes, please leave us for now, Anera," Brienne says. "Go to the kitchens and have a cup of tea. I'll send for you."

Anera curtseys, and leaves the room.

Once the door closes behind her, Brienne gets straight to the point. "What did Ser Roland Fossoway have to say?"

The Hand stares at Brienne, looks down at the baby lying in the crook of her arm, and then back at Brienne again. "After everything that's gone on tonight, that's the first thing you want to talk about?"

"Someone tried to _murder_ our king in this room tonight. I'm going to get to the bottom of it." Surely he understands the seriousness of that.

"And you gave birth to _my niece_ in this room tonight, and I'd dearly like to get to the bottom of that!" he bites out. All trace of the affable mock-annoyance he displayed upon entering the room is gone, replaced by something sharp and hostile.

Brienne's eyes open wide in surprise. She can't remember him ever talking to her in such a way before, but before she can say anything in reply, the baby stirs in her arms and starts to cry.

"Don't raise your voice!" Brienne hisses at the Hand, and then turns her attention to quieting the baby, hushing her and rocking her gently, telling her that everything is all right, until the thin wail turns into hiccups and then subsides. The baby mouths at Brienne's nipple through the thin fabric of the chemise for a moment, but then the little mouth goes slack and her eyes shut.

When Brienne looks up, she finds the Hand watching her in astonishment and… fury?

"What?" she asks, feeling colour rush into her cheeks. She feels open and exposed. If only there were a way to breastfeed while wearing a full set of armour.

The Hand shakes his head slowly. "If anyone had asked me, I would have said you didn't have it in you, but there you sit, the picture of the Mother, comforting your child."

Brienne snorts softly. "Don't be fooled. I don't have any real idea of what I'm doing."

"It's not so much the way you're doing it, but that you're doing it at all," he says flatly.

It's a hurtful thing to say. Brienne swallows. She had thought she'd experienced every possible slight, and armoured herself against every hurtful word that could be hurled at her, but it seems there is a whole host of new ones to contend with now that she is a mother.

"Why didn't you tell me?" the Hand asks, and Brienne is surprised to see pain mixed with the anger that still burns in the depths of his eyes. "Did you really think I wouldn't help you? You were carrying my brother's child."

"You don't know that," Brienne counters at once. The instinct to deflect, deny, _protect_ kicks in in the face of a threat. This is her child, and it seems that Tyrion Lannister is no longer her ally.

He gives her a long, steady look. "So you took another lover to your bed right after Jaime left Winterfell?"

Brienne is proud that she does not flinch at the mention of _his_ name. She eyes the Hand levelly and says not a word. He hates that sort of thing.

"Or perhaps more than one?" the Hand presses, sounding contemptuous.

"Of course not!" Brienne retorts, stung. The baby whimpers at her breast, and the conversation stops again as Brienne calms her.

"Of course not," the Hand agrees in a low voice once the baby quiets, but his gaze is still hard as flint. "I know that. So it follows that she must be my brother's child."

"She's mine!" Brienne declares, but in an undervoice so as not to disturb the baby.

"Perhaps she shouldn't be."

Brienne goes cold. He's not suggesting what he seems to be suggesting. Is he? He can't be. "What do you want?" she asks, enunciating each word carefully and distinctly.

"You were the one who requested my presence here tonight, as I recall."

"Don't play your word games with me. You know what I'm asking."

"What do I want?" the Hand asks musingly, leaning back in his chair. "But that's really not the question, is it? It's about what you want—or don't want." He almost spits out the last two words.

"Are you suggesting that I don't want her?" Brienne can't quite believe she's hearing this. Where has it come from, this anger and derision?

"Do you?"

"Why would you think that I didn't?"

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe it was the way you sparred in the yard every single day for months, or the way you did so little to look after yourself that you hardly ever slept, or the way you _fought an assassin and took a blow to the belly without a second thought_. I think I can be forgiven for believing that you didn't want the child, and that while you didn't actively try to rid yourself of it, you put yourself in harm's way every chance you got in the hope that that would do the job for you." The Hand's voice is quiet and vicious.

All the blood has drained from Brienne's face by the time he finishes speaking. "You really think so little of me?" she whispers. "You really think that I felt so little for… for _him_ that I would try to lose his child?"

"What other explanation is there?" the Hand asks harshly.

"I didn't know," Brienne says, her voice all but inaudible.

"What?" the Hand asks, but it's clear he's heard her. It's his turn to look uncomprehending. "What didn't you know?"

"I didn't know that I was with child. Not until the maester told me tonight," Brienne explains, her voice stronger now, though still kept low so as not to disturb the child.

The expression on the Hand's face is comical, somewhere between disbelieving and thunderstruck. "How could you not know that?"

"I told you I didn't have any idea of what I was doing," Brienne says with a humourless smile. The baby stirs in her arms and Brienne rocks her gently, bending her head to breathe in the distinctive baby smell that is already as familiar to her as the sight of her own sword hand.

"I wouldn't necessarily say that," Tyrion Lannister says. His voice has lost much of its harshness.  Brienne looks up to find him watching the baby in her arms with confusion in his eyes. Confusion, and a sort of pleading. "Tell me about it. Make me understand."

"I… I didn't know," Brienne says, raising a hand in a helpless gesture. "After J- _he_ left, I just went back to my life the way it was before. I didn't really show at all, even right up until tonight. The maester says that happens sometimes."

The Hand nods slowly.

"I admit that maybe I didn't want to know. There were… symptoms, which I ignored, or tried to find other causes for," Brienne continues, and bites down on her bottom lip. "But despite that, I swear to you, here and now, on all of the Seven, on the King's life, that I would never try to end things in the way that you suggested, not any child I carried, still less… _our_ child. I would _die_ for this child, gladly, without a second thought. She's all that I have left of h- of _Jaime_ , and she's _mine_ ," she finishes fiercely.

"She's all that I have left of Jaime, too," the Hand says, his voice barely above a whisper. "I thought all I had left of him were memories. Memories, and that stupid golden hand. I've never been so glad to be wrong."

They share a long look of understanding. Or, at least, Brienne hopes that's what it is.

The baby, who has slept through much of their more heated conversation, starts to cry again at the sudden silence. It takes Brienne a while to hush her. She probably needs feeding again, but it will have to wait, if at all possible.

"Come and sit with me by the fire," she says to the Hand, and it's as good as waving a flag of truce. She gets out of bed and carefully lays the baby back under the miniature blankets, surrounded by the pillow fortifications on the other side of the bed. "Sleep, little one," she says, and bends down to leave a kiss on the baby's forehead. Gathering the shawl around her, she stoops to retrieve Oathkeeper and turns to find Tyrion Lannister watching her. "Just in case," she says, looking down at the sword.

She doesn't specify what, exactly, it is just in case _of_ , but he nods, and waits while Brienne carries the branch of candles from beside the bed and sets it on the small table between the two fireside chairs. Another log has been placed on the fire at some point when Brienne was asleep, probably by Anera, and now it's burning merrily again. It crackles and pops and every now and then a flame leaps up as if trying to fly right up and out of the chimney.

"So, tell me," Brienne says, once they are settled, she with Oathkeeper where it belongs, at her side.

"Tell you what?" the Hand asks, frowning, but his quizzical look is almost in keeping with the way in which he usually almost-teases her.

"I've spoken long enough for the moment. Now you tell me why you were so very angry."

"It must be obvious, surely."

"Humour me," Brienne says, running her fingers along Oathkeeper's hilt and watching the ruby eyes of the golden lion pommel shine like tiny flames in the firelight.

"Very well," says the Hand, with rather poor grace. He glowers at Brienne. "You wouldn't happen to have any wine, would you?" he asks rather plaintively.

"This isn't my room," Brienne points out.

The Hand smiles briefly.

"What?" Brienne asks.

"At least that answer wasn't a flat refusal to take a cup of wine with me. Who knows, I may yet persuade you to call me Tyrion, as well."

"Don't bet on it," Brienne says, but she lets one corner of her mouth turn up in the hint of a smile as she continues to stare down at her sword.

A silence falls between them then, a companionable sort of silence, and it's the Hand who eventually breaks it.

"I wouldn't have survived my childhood without Jaime," he says, staring into the fire. "He was the only one of my family who ever liked me. The others tolerated me—just barely—so long as they set eyes on me as little as possible. But Jaime, he was my protector and my companion. He was my friend as well as my brother. My only friend.”

"He loved you," Brienne says, still resolutely staring down at the pommel of her sword. "And you loved him."

The Hand is silent for a moment. A long moment. And then he says, "I freed Jaime, after he'd been taken prisoner by our qu- by the Targaryen forces. I freed him to go to King's Landing." He swallows hard. "If I hadn't…" He swallows again. "If I hadn't…"

"If you hadn't, he would have found some way to escape," Brienne says.

"You don't know that."

"Yes, I do," says Brienne. "He would have." And then she realises: "That's why you can't sleep at night, isn't it? Because you let _him_ go?"

There's silence again, and then the Hand says, "I wish to all the gods I had some wine." His hands are in his lap, clasping tightly then releasing, over and over again. Finally, he slouches against the arm of his chair, leaning sideways until he's halfway to being horizontal. He stares up at the ceiling, as if searching for inspiration, divine or otherwise.

Brienne waits.

"I was the one who found them," he tells the ceiling. "I knew where they had to be. I hoped, although I knew it was hopeless. The roof had fallen in, the walls. There was rubble everywhere, a hill of rubble. And then… And then I saw that ridiculous golden ha-"

"Stop!" Brienne bursts out. And then, quieter, "Don't say it." She knows _he's_ gone, but she can't bear to picture the scene, any more than she can bear to think or say his name.

The baby stirs at the raised voice, but after a few small, sleepy sounds, there's quiet from the bed again.

"You loved him," the Hand says. The words are no more a question than when Brienne said them a moment ago.

"Do you think I would have taken him, or any man, to my bed for anything less?"

"I know that now. I didn't then." He rights himself in the chair and looks over at her, lowering his head until she's forced to meet his gaze. "He loved you," he says, giving her her own words back a second time.

"He loved _Cersei_." Brienne turns her head away as tears prick her eyes.

The Hand lets out a bark of harsh laughter. "'Love' is not a word that I would use in relation to what lay between them. Maybe once, at least on Jaime's side, but for a long time before… before the end there was no love there. Obsession, connection, call it what you will, but not love. He was in her thrall. And then he wasn't. He came to Winterfell to fight for the living. And he came there for you."

Brienne closes her eyes, and for a moment she's back at Winterfell, seeing _him_ newly arrived, alone and unexpected, right there before her, and again feeling all the joy and terror of being confronted with a helpless, hopeless love. "And then he left me for Cersei."

"He couldn't leave her to die alone, and there was a child—or so she said," the Hand argues, his hand clutching at an imaginary goblet.

"And you all believed her." Brienne can't keep the bitterness out of her voice.

"Jaime had lost all of his other children. If there was even a chance… He had to take it."

"Yes," Brienne says, for what else is there left to say?

"For what it's worth, I believe he would have come back to try to find you, afterwards. Once Cersei and the child were safe. If he could."

The look in the Hand's eyes is kind. It's almost more than Brienne can bear.

"Yes, if he could." She smiles sadly.

"If he had known that you…" The Hand's voice trails off, and he looks over at the sleeping child on the bed. "He would have loved her."

"Yes," Brienne says again.

"I will help you, you know. In any way I can." The sincerity shines in his eyes, or maybe that's just the firelight.

"I don't need any help."

The Hand rolls his eyes towards the ceiling. "Of course you need help. You're already getting help. And you'll need more."

"I'll manage," Brienne insists.

"What, you're expecting to just return to the position of Lord Commander of the Kingsguard while nursing a tiny baby?"

Brienne has no real answer to that. No answer at all. At least, not an answer she wants to put into words. But the Hand is waiting for an answer, so she takes a deep breath, and says, "If I were to stay on as Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, if His Grace will still have me—me, the mother of the Kingslayer's bastard—I don't think I could keep her with me." Saying the words is like a physical pain. "I could send her to Tarth, to my father. She'll be safe there."

"No, she won't. She won't be going to Tarth, and she won't be a bastard."

Brienne frowns at him. "What do you have in mind?" she asks. The baby is a noble bastard born in King's Landing, so she's entitled to the surname Waters and no other. Or maybe not even that, since that name is reserved for noble bastards acknowledged by their fathers, and there is no father left to acknowledge Brienne's child. But the Hand knows all of this quite well, so he must have some plan.

"Do you really think His Grace will not make the child legitimate by Royal decree?" he asks.

"I haven't had the opportunity to discuss it with him," Brienne says with a wry smile. "But if he does make her legitimate she could as easily be a Tarth as a Lannister, particularly with no father to acknowledge her."

"Brienne of Tarth's daughter could perhaps grow up safe and almost anonymous in near obscurity on Tarth," the Hand observes. "But the world will inevitably come looking for Jaime Lannister's daughter, and she needs to be prepared. She needs to be _protected_."

"I will protect her," Brienne says. "My father will protect her."

"And did growing up half-wild on Tarth prepare you for the world, for the way it would treat you?" the Hand asks.

"No," says Brienne, because she's no good at lying, even when she desperately wants to.

"Let me take her to Casterly Rock. She can-"

"No!" The thought of her child growing up at Casterly Rock without her mother to protect her is not even to be thought.

"Then it looks as if the only option left is to let her grow up in King's Landing under the watchful eye of her mother—and her uncle."

It's tempting to agree with him. He makes it all sound so easy, but… "You seem to be making a number of quite large assumptions," Brienne points out. "Chief among them that I will remain Lord Commander of the Kingsguard and so have a place in King's Landing."

"His Grace knows your worth. I doubt very much that he would even consider replacing you."

Can she be a mother _and_ a Lord Commander? Brienne wonders. It's never been done before, but then, that's what they've always said to her: women can't be warriors, women can't be knights, women can't be Kingsguard. She's proved them all wrong.

"All right," Brienne says. "Say that you're right. His Grace will keep me on as Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, and my daughter stays here with the both of us to watch over her. Why does she need to be a Lannister as well?"

"You know why. Because it's the best way to keep her safe," the Hand says. "Give her any name but Lannister and she'll grow up being talked of as the Kingslayer's bastard. Is that what you want?"

Brienne wants to dispute that, but she knows he's right. It was bad enough being derisively talked of as the Kingslayer's whore when she was still very much a maid. If she had only herself to consider, she would bestow the name Tarth on her child with pride, but the world won't leave them alone, and her beautiful little daughter would grow up hearing whispers of "Kingslayer's bastard" following her throughout the Red Keep.

The Hand is watching her carefully."You can give her something that none of his other children had," he points out softly, and Brienne has a strong sense that he is going in for the kill.

It's not something Brienne wants to be reminded of, so she takes refuge in self-deprecation. "What? A mother without the first clue about mothering?" she asks.

The Hand gives her a look that says he knows she's being purposely obtuse. "Her father's name," he says simply, and as he holds her gaze, the expression on his face says he knows he's won.

It's a moment before Brienne can speak again. "Very well," she says at last, and then she has to clear her throat before continuing. " _Assuming_ that His Grace is willing to keep me on as Lord Commander, and _assuming_ that he makes my daughter into a trueborn Lannister by Royal decree, what comes next?"

"She'll need a given name before anything else. I don't suppose you've had time to choose one?"

Brienne gives him what she hopes is a mysterious look, though knowing her lack of skill at that sort of thing it might look more like constipation. She gets up and goes to get the baby. The child is awake, gurgling up at the bed canopy in apparent good humour. Brienne picks her up and brings her back to her chair by the hearth. She cradles the baby in her arms, one elbow tilted up so that the Hand has a clear view of the little face.

"Tyrion, may I present Catelyn Waters, soon to be Lannister." She uses his given name as casually as she can, without warning or comment.

"What an interesting choice, _Brienne_ ," Tyrion says, wiggling two fingers in front of the baby's face.

The baby gurgles some more.

He's never going to call her Lord Commander again, Brienne knows it deep in her guts. Not when they're alone, in any event. They've trodden a twisted path to get here, but she can't deny that they're family now. For one thing, he's sure to never let her forget it.

"Do you approve?" she asks, not that her choice needs his approval. Still, she'd like to know what he thinks of it.

"Oh, I think Cat is an excellent name for a little Lion. I can't help but wonder what Catelyn Stark might have made of little Catelyn Lannister, though," Tyrion says with a mischievous grin.

"Meeting Lady Catelyn was the first step of the journey that led me here," Brienne says, completely serious. "She was the first person, apart from Renly, ever to see me as something other than a joke. Because of her, I found my Lady Sansa—Queen Sansa—and all the rest. Because of her, I'm Lord Commander of her son's Kingsguard."

"Because of her, you met my brother," Tyrion says, no longer grinning.

"Yes." Brienne heaves a deep sigh. "Because of her, Little Catelyn is alive to bear her name and honour her memory."

They're silent again for a moment.

"Well, it will be dawn soon. I think that's nearly everything," Tyrion says, but he makes no move to rise from his chair.

"Nearly?" Brienne asks.

"You've used my given name. Now you need to share a cup of wine with me. Remember? You said you'd do that the day you called me Tyrion." He looks around hopefully, as if a bottle of wine might have appeared by magic on the table when he wasn't looking.

"No," says Brienne. "Not yet," she adds. Little Cat is making small snuffling noises against her breast. "Someone else needs a drink right now."

Tyrion looks faintly appalled as he follows Brienne's gaze and works out her meaning. In another instant he's on his feet. "I should be going," he says. "It will be dawn soon and there's a great deal to do today."

Brienne puts out a hand and stops him before he can take more than a few steps. "You still haven't told me about Ser Roland Fossoway."

Tyrion makes a face. "There isn't much to tell. He's clearly up to his neck in the plot to murder His Grace, though he claims that his life has been threatened, that his wife and son are being held hostage—or so he's been told—all manner of things, all of which are mysteriously beyond his control."

"But?" Brienne says.

"The box of gold dragons hidden in a cavity in the floor of his chamber tells its own tale," Tyrion says.

"And who has been making these threats—or payments?" Brienne asks.

"That," says Tyrion, "is what I intend to discover today."

Little Cat chooses that moment to make her displeasure known. She screws up her little face and lets out a thin, reedy howl.

Tyrion's face assumes a slightly hunted look, and with a hasty bow to Brienne he crosses the room and sees himself out.

Brienne wastes no time in freeing a breast from beneath her chemise. The wailing abruptly stops as Little Cat's mouth finds the nipple.

She settles back into her chair by the fire, strokes her daughter's little head, and smiles.


	5. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is for Telanu, with heartfelt gratitude - and I don't just mean for her help wrangling this thing.
> 
> Well, this is the last bit! It was supposed to be an epilogue, but it got long. If the first four chapters were one particular Day in the Life for Brienne, then this chapter is another Day in the Life, though it's a very different sort of day.
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who's left comments and kudos and accompanied me on the journey that is this story, even though it's post-series and canon compliant, with everything that that means for this pairing. It's been driven by my need to understand what Brienne was feeling, after the way the show ended, and to try to find a way to make her happy.
> 
> I hope you like how things end up.

_Seven Months Later_

The day dawns cool and clear, or so Anera reports when she comes to wake Brienne.

"Mmph," Brienne replies, opening her eyes and wondering how it can be morning already as she squints up at the nursemaid. She was up until very late last night, immersed in the preparations for the celebration in three days' time of the first anniversary of King Bran's coronation. And then Little Cat kept her up half the night, miserable with a tooth taking its time coming through.

Sometimes, just _sometimes_ , Brienne feels nostalgic for the days when it was only endless morning sickness keeping her from her sleep.

She sits up and hauls herself out of bed, still blinking blearily.

"You should have let me stay to look after the child last night," Anera scolds, as authoritative and familiar as if she had been Brienne's nurse since the cradle as well. She is actually the daughter of a prosperous apothecary who has a large shop just off the Street of the Sisters, and a noted healer in her own right. Brienne still doesn't know quite why Anera decided to take on the job of caring for Little Cat through the day and sometimes half the night, but she is endlessly grateful that she did.

"You need to go home and sleep sometimes," Brienne says.

"And so do you," Anera says, belatedly adding, "Lord Commander," though there is nothing remotely subservient about the way she says it.

Brienne dresses quickly and hurries through to the adjoining nursery.

It had soon become apparent after Little Cat's birth that continuing to live in the White Sword Tower was impractical at best, so Brienne had taken over a suite of rooms in Maegor's Holdfast, closeby the King's own chambers. The change has worked out well for the most part, though Brienne does sometimes wonder about what her brothers of the Kingsguard may get up to when she's ensconced in Maegor's Holdfast with her child.

Little Cat is lying on her back in her cradle, kicking her legs in the air and trying very hard to grab her toes. Brienne scoops her up and rains kisses on her little head. The baby turns her face away, attracted by the shiny gold clasp of Brienne's cloak.

"Muh," she says. "Muh!" And then follows it with a string of what sounds like very conversational babble.

"Really?" Brienne says, her voice going up about an octave from its usual pitch. She knows she has a stupid grin on her face, but Little Cat always makes her smile.

The baby gives her a gummy smile in return. She's been such a happy child almost since the day she was born, despite the turmoil leading up to her birth, until lately when she's reached the teething stage. Brienne carefully pushes open Little Cat's mouth to check her gums properly and there, to her relief, is the white of a tooth showing above the lower gum that had been the source of all the unhappiness through the night.

"Just in the nick of time," Brienne tells the baby.

Little Cat smiles again, back to her usual sunny-natured self. Brienne will do everything in her power to ensure that Little Cat stays that way for as long as she possibly can.

Until the world touches her, as it inevitably will.

Brienne will be ready and waiting to catch her and hold her and keep her safe when that day comes—but today is not that day, nor will it be for many days to come. But still, today will be a memorable day, of that she is sure.

"It's an important day, today," she tells the baby, her voice returning to something like its normal register. "Such a big day for a little girl, but I'll be there, and so will Uncle Tyrion, and we'll make sure everything is all right."

Little Cat babbles some more.

"Exactly," Brienne agrees. "So long as they arrive in good time today, or else your big day will have to be tomorrow," she adds, returning her to the cradle, and pulling up the covers that the baby had gleefully kicked off during the night.

Anera appears at her elbow then, with a small tray. Brienne gulps down a cup of mint tea—she's developed a taste for it even though she no longer ever feels queasy—and grabs half a small loaf of honey bread. She greets Little Cat's wet nurse, Bredgit, who has just arrived, drops a kiss on the baby's head, and shouts a farewell to Anera over her shoulder as she departs for the training yard.

The bread is long gone by the time she gets there, and Brienne wishes she'd taken the other half of the loaf with her as well. She surveys the newest recruits—a few of them show some promise with a sword, which is some little relief—says good morning to Ser Diarmid, whose task it is to give extra training to the handful that show the most promise of all, and makes her way to the far end of the training yard.

The recruits here are a little different from the others. They're smaller and slighter of stature, for the most part, and clad in boiled leather armour rather than mail. She waits until the bout in progress has concluded and then approaches the victor.

"Not bad, Palina," she says. "Your technique has improved. Just make sure to hold the sword a little higher when you change position into the ox guard stance."

Palina is still breathing heavily after her exertions, but she smiles and says, "Yes, Lord Commander."

"And now off with you," Brienne says, making a shooing motion with one gauntleted hand. "I'll never hear the end of it from Master Merwyn if you're not back in time to help deliver the breakfast trays to all the extra guests staying in the keep." She's joking. Mostly. Master Merwyn is the new head of the King's household and only a glorified servant, but one with more self-importance than… well, the King. Brienne would be the first to admit that Merwyn's officious manner has its uses—so long as it's directed at the right people. Brienne will never forget her first encounter with him on the night Little Cat was born. She suspects that Merwyn will never forget it either, if only because the serving girls sent to clean the room of blood and make up the bed for Brienne were such a severe disappointment to him.

"Yes, Lord Commander," Palina says, and bobs her head in acknowledgement, but she's grinning as she runs off towards the kitchens.

Brienne watches Palina go. The night of the attempt on the King's life, Palina had been one of the serving maids engaged in filling His Grace's bath. A few days later, she'd come to Brienne, ashamed that all she could do was stand there and scream while Brienne fought off the attacker and her friend died beside her. She'd asked to learn how to defend herself, and others, if the need ever arose again. When Brienne had explained that that meant learning to attack as well, Palina had asked to be shown how to do that, too, so Brienne had taken her through the basics. She proved to be light on her feet and graceful of movement, and suited best to a smaller, lighter sword than those favoured by the Gold Cloaks, let alone the Kingsguard. Brienne had looked at her and wondered, and gone to talk to the head armourer. The result had been the setting up of a daily training session for any of the female servants who wanted to learn to use a sword—and another session for any of the male servants who wanted to learn, too. But, as it's turned out, almost all of those who've signed up have come from the ranks of the serving girls. If the Red Keep ever comes under attack again, it won't be only the Gold Cloaks and the Kingsguard who will be ready to defend its inhabitants.

Brienne strides over to one of the other training yards, where Ser Podrick is waiting for her. She raises an eyebrow and he nods. No words are needed between them.

They spar with the caution of long familiarity at first, circling and sizing each other up, testing each other with sudden jabs and feints and parries, until Brienne lunges suddenly, trying to break through Podrick's guard. But he's ready for it, and deflects her blow. And then it's on in earnest.

Their bout goes on and on. They're much more evenly matched than they used to be. In the end, Brienne is victorious—just—and she's breathing hard and has broken out into a sweat by the time they're done.

"Not bad," she says as she sheathes her sword. "I think you're finally improving."

Podrick knows this for the rare praise that it is, of course, and a proud little smile hovers around his mouth for a moment before he thanks her for the practice session.

They breakfast in the White Sword Tower: buttered mushrooms, coddled eggs and crispy bacon, pork and sage sausages, spelt bread and a sharp-tasting hard cheese from the Reach, and a tankard of small ale to wash it all down. Brienne eats _everything_ , and then looks around for more, but just then a boy appears at the door, chest heaving after having made what appears to be a desperate dash from… somewhere.

"Message for the Lord Commander!" he declares, holding up a small scroll.

Brienne rises, takes the message from the somewhat grubby hand of the messenger, breaks the seal, and reads.

"Already!" she exclaims.

"Lord Commander?" Podrick asks.

"The ships are here already, or they shortly will be. They're sailing up Blackwater Bay with a good tailwind behind them and should dock… very soon."

"They've made good time after that setback with the storm a few days back," Podrick observes, getting to his feet as well. "I'll go and make ready."

But Brienne is already out the door in a swirl of white cloak, and striding off down the hallway.

~*~

Half an hour later, after the quickest ablutions known to man—or woman—Brienne stands at the dock in her burnished armour and clean, pure white cloak, Oathkeeper at her side, and watches as the small fleet approaches port. The flagship, a great triple-decked galley, sports a familiar sigil on its mainsail, a grey direwolf racing across a field of white, though this one bears a nine-pointed crown above the figure of the wolf, the points shaped like swords. The mainsails of the other, smaller, ships bear the same sigil, or so Brienne thinks, until one ship breaks away from the group. It is a little behind the others, on the starboard side, a sturdy, square-rigged brig, and the sigil on its mainsail, oh, that sigil. The yellow suns on rose quartered with white crescent moons on azure are more familiar to her than any other sigil in all of Westeros. It is the sigil of House Tarth.

Her father has come after all!

Or maybe not. Maybe he's just sent someone to represent him. There's no way to know until the brig docks. Brienne steels herself for the likely disappointment and reminds herself that however it turns out, it will simply have to wait because now the galley is docking. Sailors shout as ropes fly here and there and the ship drops anchor.

Tyrion hurries to Brienne's side as the gangway is lowered. He is resplendent in a crimson and gold silk tunic and black hose, boots and cloak. The pin in the shape of a hand, the mark of his office, glints in the sun at his breast.

"Just in time," Brienne says in a low voice. "I was wondering whether you'd get here at all."

"Of course I'm in time. You don't think I'd slight my erstwhile lady wife by failing to meet her at the dock?"

"I wouldn't let her hear you call her that, if I were you," Brienne says.

Tyrion flashes her a grin. "Why not? It's just the simple truth." And then there's no more time for talking, as several attendants hurry down the gangway, unrolling a long narrow carpet to cover the damp wooden slats, and then _she_ appears behind them.

Sansa Stark, First of Her Name, Ruler and Protector of the North, descends the gangway like the queen she is. Her smile is regal, her carriage graceful, her deep red hair so seemingly artless in its arrangement that Brienne is sure that her body servant must have been hard at work on it for at least an hour. The Queen is clad in a fluted sleeved gown of blue silk over an underdress of white, embroidered with seed pearls and silver thread, a light grey velvet cloak over her shoulders and a matching silver circlet at her brow. She looks like a creature out of a fireside tale—one of the good and beautiful creatures—but she strides down the gangway with all the assurance of a general, two heavily armed Northmen at her heels.

"Your Grace. Welcome to King's Landing. I trust you've had a pleasant journey." Tyrion gives Sansa a very respectful bow as she sets foot on dry land, and then it's Brienne's turn.

She bows very low, just a tiny fraction short of the sorts of bows she gives to her own King. "Your Grace," she says.

"Lord Commander Brienne." Sansa's smile is warm as her gaze meets Brienne's. Brienne had forgotten how tall Sansa is. Not as tall as Brienne, of course, but it's still the closest Brienne has ever come to looking another woman straight in the eyes instead of having to look down at her.

The Queen's smile is somewhat less warm as she turns to the Hand, but Brienne is sure she notices a little spark of what might be humour in her eyes. " _Tyrion_. The journey was uneventful. _Mostly_."

"I am overjoyed to hear that, Your Grace. His Grace awaits you in Maegor's Holdfast," Tyrion says smoothly. "Our carriage." He gestures to the closed carriage, which is waiting nearby. The Queen will not have to soil her feet in the mud and slush and who knows what else to be found on the ground by the King's Landing docks. That delight will be reserved for the lesser members of her retinue, who are now making their way down the gangway.

Brienne helps the Queen into the carriage, but as Tyrion climbs in to join her, Brienne turns to look along the docks one last time. The brig from Tarth is just tying up, but she can't see anyone on deck apart from the crew. Sighing, she gets into the carriage and closes the door, while Sansa's two guards scramble up onto the wooden bench seats on each side of the roof. Brienne sticks her arm out through the window and thumps the side of the carriage with her mailed fist, to let the driver know that they're ready to depart, and the carriage starts off on its journey up the hill to the Red Keep.

It's quite an intimate space inside, with Brienne in the backwards seat facing Sansa and Tyrion, and trying to keep her knees to herself. The clopping of the horses' hooves and rumbling of the carriage wheels along the cobblestones do a good job of drowning out the sound of their conversation, should any ears be listening outside.

"So tell me," says Sansa, after a few minutes have passed, "have you discovered anything more about the plot against Bran's life half a year ago?"

Brienne refrains from pointing out that it was actually seven months ago. It's not a night that she's ever likely to forget, for more than one reason.

"Do you want the short answer or the long answer?" Tyrion says with an irritated huff, before quickly adding, "Your Grace."

"Both," says Sansa.

"The short answer is 'not exactly', and the long answer is… more complicated."

Sansa sits back against the cushioned seat with an expectant look on her face, and waits.

Tyrion looks out of the window, then back at Brienne, and then finally turns to Sansa. "As you may recall, Lord Commander Brienne fought and subdued the would-be assassin in His Grace's bedchamber."

"And then gave birth," Sansa says, nodding, and casts an admiring glance Brienne's way, as if to say, 'good job'.

"Yes, and then gave birth," Tyrion says, waving a hand a touch impatiently, "while _I_ interrogated the prisoner. I didn't get very much out of him, so I had him thrown in a black cell without food or blankets for the night, intending to question him again the next morning."

"But when the guards came to check on him in the morning, he was dead. Poison," Brienne puts in.

Tyrion sighs. "Suicide. And, there's no need to say it. Once again, I made the wrong decision." He rubs one eye tiredly. "The dead bodies were starting to pile up. There was His Grace's own body servant, found dead in the passageway going down to the beach just outside the city walls where three accomplices were surprised and killed by Bronn and one of the Kingsguard. Two were Unsullied, like the assailant, while a third looked to be from Westeros."

He pauses, and Brienne takes up the tale. "We still don't know the identities of any of the Unsullied," she adds, trying to keep the frustration of their _still_ not getting to the bottom of this out of her voice, "but we know they belonged to a smaller, breakaway group who parted from the rest of the Unsullied after they departed from Westeros."

Sansa turns to look at Tyrion, her brows raised.

"Grey Worm," Tyrion says, in answer to Sansa's unspoken question. "I knew Grey Worm was unlikely to be involved in this. Why would he want His Grace dead? Westeros no longer holds any interest for him, and, even if it did, if he didn't kill me, and he didn't kill _Jon Snow_ when he had every opportunity, why would he feel that His Grace should be done away with now? It won't bring Daenerys back."

"Thank goodness," Sansa mutters.

Tyrion looks down at the floor for a moment, and then continues, "So I sent to the Isle of Naath, to find out from Grey Worm if he knew of any malcontents among the Unsullied who might take a different view. And it turned out that he did."

"Do we know anything more of this breakaway group?" Sansa asks.

Tyrion shakes his head. "We've been able to discover very little, other than that they exist. Or, rather, that they existed. Grey Worm's forces wiped them out a few months ago. They made the mistake of trying to attack and plunder Naath under cover of darkness. Grey Worm did not take that well."

"So they're no longer a threat to Bran's life," Sansa says. "What of the other man who was killed on the beach that night?"

"He was Ser Guy Mullendore, a knight who was exiled to the Free Cities and joined the Golden Company for a time. His Grace's body servant Rufus was from the Reach and served at Uplands, the seat of House Mullendore, in his youth," Brienne explains.

"So at least we have a fair idea of the role that Rufus played in this, if nothing else," Tyrion adds. "It's little enough, and troubling enough."

"But that's not true," Sansa says. "Not necessarily. If Rufus was part of a conspiracy to kill Bran, why not simply kill him himself? He would have had constant opportunities to do so."

Brienne nods. "That's a good point, Your Grace. _One that I have made to the lord Hand before_ ," she adds, with a speaking look at Tyrion. He is too intent on ascribing the worst motives to people when it comes to anything involving a hint of betrayal. She can understand it, but it does cloud his judgement from time to time. "Perhaps Ser Guy simply persuaded—or threatened—Rufus to help get him into the Red Keep, without Rufus being a party to any of their plans."

"Do you know anything else of Ser Guy?" Sansa asks.

"He was the one paying Ser Roland Fossoway, the former Lord Commander of the City Watch, to stop the rebuilding of the Royal fleet in whatever way he could. We got that much out of Fossoway," Tyrion says.

"And where is Ser Roland now?" Sansa says.

"Need you ask?" Tyrion replies bitterly. "He's dead too. Not that I think he had anything useful left to tell us, but now we'll never know for sure."

"How did he die?" Sansa asks, her expression curious and thoughtful but not dismayed, as if she might be the lady of any house, working out something as simple as how best to rearrange the meals and sleeping quarters when her lord husband brings home more guests than are expected.

"You've come a long way from the frightened young girl I married," Tyrion observes.

"Your Grace," Sansa corrects, with a reproving look.

"You prove my point, _Your Grace_ ," Tyrion replies, his lips quirking, and then his tone turns serious. "He was drowned in a bucket of water in his cell. None of the guards saw anyone enter or leave, and yet he could not have drowned himself. Someone held his head down."

Sansa frowns very slightly. "Someone paid off the guards."

"It would appear so," Tyrion says, "since one of those on duty that night was found with his throat cut from ear to ear in the back alley behind a tavern before we could question him properly. It could have been a coincidence, but…" He opens his hands expressively.

Sansa's frown deepens, clearly considering everything that has just been said. "Is there anything else you've discovered?"

"There's just the spear that the would-be assassin used to try to murder the King. His Grace says it has been touched by magic. And the only place that that sort of magic is practised, at least since the fall of Old Valyria, is in Asshai."

Tyrion falls silent and Sansa goes still. Brienne wonders if they, like her, are remembering the Red Woman, who claimed to come from Asshai.

"So either this Ser Guy Mullendore used the rebel Unsullied, or the Unsullied used him or…" Sansa's voice trails off.

"Or someone from Asshai used them all," Brienne finishes for her.

"And since Ser Guy is dead and the breakaway Unsullied are no more," Tyrion adds, "if any more attempts should be made on His Grace's life-

"Which there won't," Brienne puts in firmly.

"As I was saying, if any more attempts should be made on His Grace's life, _however unlikely_ "—he shoots an irritated glance at Brienne—"we will know to look to Asshai. But despite all of that, we still don't know who was behind the original attempt to assassinate our King."

Outside the window, the city passes them by. The flutter of sails, the sight of wheeling gulls and strong smell of fish that permeates the docks have been left behind, and up ahead the Red Keep looms.

"I wonder," says Sansa, her perfect brow creased in a frown, "if they don't want to kill the King."

"What? Of course they want to kill the King. They tried to kill the King, and they would have succeeded if not for Brienne," Tyrion says, returning her frown with one of his own.

"I don't mean that they don't want to kill Bran. Obviously, they do. But what if it's not the King they're after? What if they want to kill the Three-eyed Raven?"

And all Brienne and Tyrion can do for a very long moment is stare at her. Could the answer be as simple—and complicated—as that?

~*~

The reunion between brother and sister is formal and subdued, but not unfriendly. King Bran welcomes Queen Sansa to King's Landing and thanks her for making her first state visit on this important occasion. Queen Sansa makes a suitable reply, thanking King Bran for his hospitality and congratulating him on surviving _almost_ a year on the throne—even though there isn't one—a milestone she herself has yet to reach. After that, there's nothing much left to say. Not publicly. Their king takes an interest in many things, but conversation is not one of them. But as Queen Sansa takes her leave of him, expressing the intention of retiring to the apartments that have been assigned to her to rest after the long sea voyage, the King speaks.

"You don't have to worry about the assassins any more, Sansa," he says, and Brienne sees Sansa visibly start.

"Why do you say that, Bran?" Sansa asks.

They've forgotten to be king and queen for the moment, or at least Sansa has. Now they really are just brother and sister again. For the moment.

"A dragon attacked Asshai. Not all of it. Just one small part of it. The people who lived there won't trouble us again," His Grace says, his voice as measured and calm as always.

"A dragon," Sansa says, and then asks carefully, "What dragon?"

"There is only one dragon," replies the King.

Drogon! He's found Drogon, after more than a year. And done more than found him, by the sound of it, Brienne thinks with a twinge of unease.

Sansa is silent for a moment, and then she says, "I'm glad to hear it," as the serene mask of the Queen settles on her features once more.

"I'll see you this afternoon," the King says.

"Until this afternoon," Sansa agrees.

"My lord Hand." The King nods for Tyrion to join him, and gives the signal for Ser Willem to push his chair over to the window, and that is pretty much that.

"I'll see you to your rooms, Your Grace," Brienne says, as they leave the King's solar.

Sansa shakes her head. "The rooms will wait. Aren't you going to show me the baby?" she asks, and there's a sparkle in her eye that makes Brienne wonder if the Kingdom of the North might not soon acquire a consort and an heir—assuming that the Queen can ever bear to take a man to her bed again, of course.

"Of course, Your Grace," Brienne says. "You'll meet her later, obviously, but-"

"I want to meet her now, Brienne. Unless there is some reason not to?"

"Oh, no. No reason," says Brienne. "She's probably sleeping right now—neither of us got much sleep last night—but we can certainly look in on her at the very least." Sansa is a queen, even if she is not Brienne's queen, and she will always be her Lady Sansa. Brienne cannot deny her, but she hopes that Sansa will be satisfied with a look, if Little Cat proves to be asleep. Brienne doesn't want to have to deal with a tired, cranky baby later.

As it turns out, Little Cat is wide awake and smiling her near-toothless smile when Brienne ushers Sansa into the nursery. Anera curtseys low, showing more deference to Sansa than Brienne has ever seen her use towards anyone, and retreats to the main room of the suite, closing the door quietly behind her.

"Yes, I'm here!" Brienne says in a high, delighted voice that she can't stop herself from using with the baby however hard she tries, as she swings Little Cat up into her arms.

"Muh!" Little Cat says, looking up at Brienne with her little head lying against the towel that Brienne has slung over her shoulder to provide the baby with a cushion between her and her mother's armoured breast. "Buh!" she adds, as Brienne turns and Little Cat spots Sansa—or at least the shining silver circlet on her head. She holds out her plump little arms, reaching for it.

Brienne presses a kiss to the baby's soft pale blonde hair, and she looks up to find Sansa watching them, a curious expression that Brienne can't put a name to on her face.

"What?" Brienne asks, instantly self-conscious. "Your Grace," she adds belatedly. She's becoming as bad as Tyrion.

"I knew that you had a baby, but I never thought…" Sansa's voice trails off.

"Yes, Your Grace?" Brienne asks uncertainly.

"You're a mother," Sansa says, and, smiling, holds out her hands to take the child.

Not sure what else she's supposed to be, Brienne says nothing in response but simply lays Little Cat carefully in Sansa's arms. "Make sure to support her head," she says, though no doubt the Queen is more than familiar with how to hold a baby.

Sansa coos at the baby and holds a finger out, which Little Cat grabs immediately, tiny fingers curling around it and holding on tight. "She has a good, strong grip," Sansa comments, "which is nothing less than I'd expect, given who her par- her _mother_ is."

"You can say his name," Brienne says. She can bear to hear it—just—these days, even though she hardly ever utters it herself.

Sansa doesn't respond immediately. Instead, she looks down at the baby, really looks, her eyes moving from eyes to nose and mouth, leaning her head back a little to properly take in the shape of the baby's face before letting her gaze roam the length of Little Cat's body and returning to her eyes.

"She had blue eyes a lot like mine when she was a newborn," Brienne says, "but they've changed." She takes a step closer to Sansa so that she can look down into Little Cat's eyes as well. The baby no longer has her mother's eyes, but they're not her father's eyes, either. Not quite. A ring of deep blue surrounds the bright green, gold-flecked depths. Her eyes are Brienne and h- _Jaime_ both, just like all the rest of her.

"There's a definite look of you about her. The shape of her face, though I think she may grow to have Ser- her father's cheekbones."

"No!" Brienne says, with a trifle more vehemence than is really warranted. "She doesn't look much like me at all." Little Cat's features, still soft and indistinct, already fit together more harmoniously than Brienne's ever did. Maybe she'll not grow up to be a great beauty like Sansa—though secretly a small, foolish part of Brienne wants to believe that she'll be the most beautiful girl in all of Westeros—but Little Cat will never have to endure being called "beauty" as an insult.

"She looks like herself," Sansa decides.

"Yes, yes she does," Brienne agrees, and smiles down at the baby as the Queen returns her to her mother's waiting arms.

"Brienne," Sansa says, and then stops.

"Your Grace," Brienne says at once, raising her eyebrows in question.

"May I ask you something? Something quite… personal? You have my permission not to answer if you do not wish to."

Brienne looks down at the floor and bites her lip. "I'll answer, Your Grace, of course, if I can." She braces herself, wondering which broken, ragged part of her soul she might have to bare.

"I was going to ask you if it was worth it," Sansa says.

"'It', Your Grace?" Brienne asks, confused.

"Lying with a man so that you get a baby in time," Sansa says, "though I think I know the answer just from looking at how you are with her."

Brienne goes hot, then cold, and, muttering something—she's not really sure what—she turns away and busies herself with laying Little Cat back in her cradle. Little Cat makes a small, unhappy noise at being removed from the centre of attention, and it's not until Brienne deposits her favourite toy—a gift from her Uncle Tyrion, a soft toy knitted in yellow-gold yarn in the shape of a lion with a mane of raw, unspun wool—in the cradle beside her that the baby quiets and Brienne has to straighten up and face Sansa again.

"I'm sorry," Sansa says in a rush. "I shouldn't have said- I shouldn't have asked."

Brienne raises both hands—another one of Tyrion's mannerisms that she's picked up—and says, "No, Your Grace. It's quite all right. You just surprised me, is all."

She motions Sansa over to the two chairs sitting side by side in the corner, the place where Brienne, and more lately the wet nurse, Bredgit, has sat and nursed the baby while Anera has stitched tiny garments in the chair beside her.

"That's not why I took Ser Jaime to my bed," Brienne says, looking over at the cradle. "I never thought that there would be a child. I was so used to thinking of myself as someone who had never been bedded and never would be bedded, that once he- he left I just went back to thinking of myself that way. I didn't know or expect… until it happened."

Sansa nods, but doesn't say anything, for which Brienne is profoundly grateful.

"I had three broken engagements before I decided to go out into the world and try to be a knight. Did you know that?" Brienne continues.

Sansa shakes her head. "I had no idea."

"After the third of those betrothals came to nothing, I knew I'd never marry, never be a wife, and so, I thought, I'd never be a mother either."

"And yet here you are, not a wife but a mother, and with a child that's not a Waters or a Hill or a Storm but a Lannister." The Queen's voice—for it is the Queen speaking now, the Stark of Winterfell, and not just Sansa—sounds suddenly sharp, and Brienne feels a tiny frisson of unease. She's grateful that Little Cat is safe in her cradle on the other side of the room.

"I loved Jaime," Brienne says, and realises with something like shock that it's the first time she's ever spoken those words to anyone but Jaime himself. Tyrion is the only other person to whom she's ever spoken of her feelings for Jaime, and Tyrion said the words for her that time. "I still love him. I will always love him."

"But he left you," Sansa says, frowning. She had cursed Jaime to the seven hells and back in the days after he left Winterfell, using language that Brienne was surprised to discover Sansa even knew.

"Yes, he left me," Brienne agrees, swallowing against a suddenly dry throat. "And maybe he would have come back to me, if he could have. I'll never know. But that doesn't change the sweetness of the time we had together, of loving and being loved, in all the ways that a man and woman can love each other, if only for a little while."

"So when you took him to your bed it was because you loved him and you wanted him to… to take his pleasure of you?"

It's an intrusive question, but when Brienne glances over at Sansa she finds that her eyes look almost… bruised. She's trying so hard to understand, Brienne can see, but the idea of a woman taking her pleasure of a man as he takes his pleasure of her is quite outside her frame of reference. Brienne's heart aches for her.

"My memories of that time are only good ones, Your Grace, and that includes the nights. The world is full of bad men, terrible men, _wrong_ men, and I shudder to think what giving my body to any of them might be like, but when it's the right man…" Brienne swallows hard and blinks back tears. "Then it can be the most beautiful thing in the world. It makes you feel more… alive than you've ever been in your life."

"Brienne." Sansa is staring at her. "I never… I never knew."

Brienne takes her hand and squeezes it, even though Brienne is a knight and Sansa is a queen and she should not take such a liberty. Sansa looks as if she needs it.

"I talked of giving my body to a man, but it's not even really that," Brienne says. "It's not giving or taking but sharing, until you don't know where one of you stops and the other begins. And when I look at my child, that is what I see. Not myself, not Jaime, but both of us."

"That sounds like the sort of perfect love that I thought I wanted when I was a girl," Sansa says. "Until I grew up," she adds in a harder voice.

Brienne bites down on a laugh. "Oh, it wasn't perfect, Your Grace. I am all too human, stubborn and slow to trust, and sometimes quick to anger, too. And, as you know very well, Jaime did many things of which he was not proud, and struggled to be the better man, the good and honourable man, that I knew he could be. Sometimes he teased me, sometimes I became annoyed with him, sometimes we fought. It wasn't perfect. It was better than that—it was real."

Sansa is quiet beside her, and when Brienne looks at her face she's shocked to see tears streaming silently down her face. Brienne pulls a handkerchief from her sleeve and wordlessly hands it to Sansa.

"So, you're considering taking a husband," Brienne says, looking out of the window and using a neutral tone of voice, as if she could be commenting on the weather.

"Yes," Sansa says after a moment, and blows her nose, daintily, barely making a noise. Brienne doesn't know how she does that. When Brienne blows her nose, it sounds more like a war horn. "I don't have any candidates in mind. Yet. I'm just considering the idea. The North must have an heir."

"Not that I'm any great authority," Brienne says after a while, "but I would suggest that you take your time. Find some man whose presence makes you smile—even if it's just because of his terrible jokes."

"And what if I don't ever meet a man who can do that?" Sansa asks. "I can't imagine smiling with a man again, never mind laughing with him."

"Then find a man with whom you feel… comfortable," Brienne suggests.

Sansa stares at her, the look in her eyes so old—ancient—and weary that Brienne feels hardly older than Little Cat in comparison. "You don't understand," Sansa says. "And I'm glad that you don't. I wouldn't wish that knowledge on… almost anyone."

"That suggestion was poorly worded. My apologies," Brienne says, wincing. "But my reasoning behind it is still sound. If you can't be comfortable with a man, then you can at least be safe. Choose any man you please, but make sure that he isn't some… some king or some great lord who thinks he is more powerful than a queen. Choose someone who is content to be a husband but not a king. Have your guards at the door and even in the room, if you wish, during the bedding and at every moment of your marriage. Once you are with child, if you find you cannot bear to be married any more, send your husband away from Winterfell and find him somewhere else to live. Or divorce him, and keep the child for yourself."

Sansa nods. "Those are good suggestions, all of them. But what if I can't bear to let a man near me, ever, even a good, quiet unambitious man—if such a one exists?"

"Then that is your choice, my lady," Brienne says gently. "I mean, _Your Grace_. Princess Arya is your heir. She can be the Queen in the North after you."

Sansa laughs. It's slightly watery, but it's still a laugh. "Arya will never marry, of that I am certain. Can you imagine Arya as the lady of a great house, or any house at all? She'd go mad with boredom and stab her husband before the first week was out, and then run off to seek adventure."

"You're very likely right that she won't marry," Brienne says, "but that's not to say that she won't find herself with child someday. It's happened to more unlikely mothers." She looks over at the cradle. "And I hear she has the ear of her queen, who no doubt would be pleased to decree any child of hers legitimate."

"That's true." Sansa nods, a thoughtful look on her face. She returns the handkerchief to Brienne, who throws it into the hamper with all the other bits of cloth that a baby goes through every day, and when she looks back at Sansa the composed mask of the Queen is cloaking her features once again.

The heart-to-heart is over, it seems. Brienne tries not to heave a sigh of relief.

"Tell me, Brienne," Sansa says, and it's the Queen's voice as well as the Queen's face she's using, "what did you make of what Bran said about the dragon?"

"He was referring to Drogon, clearly," Brienne says, all but grabbing at the change of topic with both hands.

"Yes," Sansa agrees. "And why do you think Drogon attacked Asshai, and such a targeted attack at that?"

"I really couldn't say, Your Grace," Brienne says, not looking at her. Bran is her liege, her king. She is the Lord Commander of his Kingsguard. Her loyalty must be absolute.

But Queen Sansa knows her well, maybe better than anybody living save Brienne's father. She doesn't press Brienne to admit something she can never admit. "Yes, I couldn't say anything, either," she says. "But I do wonder."

"There is no crime in wondering, Your Grace," Brienne says.

They share a long look.

"If you should ever be worried about… anything," Sansa says delicately, "and you feel that it's not something that you, as the Lord Commander of his Kingsguard, can bring up with Bran—send for me, and I will come. And I will talk to him."

"His Grace will know, if I should send you a message in secret, Your Grace," Brienne says.

"There's no need to send such a message in secret. You write to me from time to time already. Continue to do so, and if the day comes when you need to send for me, you don't have to tell me any details at all. To send for me will be enough, and it will just be one of many letters that you will send me over the years." Sansa gets to her feet before Brienne can reply. "And now I believe I really will retire to my apartments for a while. I have something important to do this afternoon." She walks over to smile down at the baby, before turning to address Brienne, who has also risen to her feet. "I meant to say before, the name you chose for her, it means a great deal to me. My mother would have felt the honour keenly, and doted on the child."

"Thank you for saying so, Your Grace," Brienne says, taking her cue from Sansa and turning her attention back to the child, though a little part of her mind is furiously at work, thinking on the subject of kings—and dragons. "I don't know what she'll grow up to be, whether a knight like her parents or a great lady like Lady Catelyn, or something else entirely, but I hope she would have made Lady Catelyn proud."

"I know she would have. There could be no chance of any other outcome. And who knows, maybe little Catelyn Lannister will become a queen. They'll have to choose someone to be Bran's successor eventually, and she was born in the King's bed, after all." And so saying, Sansa opens the nursery door and goes out into the main room. Brienne follows, and they say their goodbyes—for the moment—more formal with each other, now that they're not alone together. And then the door shuts and Sansa is gone.

Anera doesn't say anything, even though they've just had a reigning queen visiting the nursery. It's one of the many reasons why she is so suited to being part of Brienne's household.

Brienne goes back into the nursery, where Little Cat is starting to whimper. She hates being alone. Brienne picks her up and holds her out in front of her.

"So, you might be a queen one day," she says to the baby. "What do you think of that?"

Little Cat grins beatifically, and a pungent and familiar stench fills Brienne's nostrils.

"Oh, you didn't!" Brienne exclaims, though she knows very well that Little Cat _did_. "Anera!" she calls through to the other room.

Anera's economy with words is not the only reason that she is such a good fit with Brienne's household.

~*~

Brienne has one other visitor that day. She's still in her rooms after Sansa has left, sitting at the table and taking a moment to drink a cup of tea that Anera has pressed on her before she gets back to the whirlwind of activity that awaits her elsewhere in the Red Keep, when there's a knock at the door. It's not a hesitant knock, or a soft or quiet knock, or the sort of carefully considered knock that most of the servants use. It's a big, booming confident bang of the fist against the door that makes the latch rattle.

Anera goes to open the door, steps back and… there he stands. Lord Selwyn, the Evenstar of Tarth, Brienne's father.

Brienne's breath catches. She shouldn't be surprised. She saw the ship down at the docks. She heard his knock just now. And yet she is surprised. He's written to her since she sent him a raven with the news of Little Cat's birth. He's written to her more than once since then. But he's never visited. It's been more years than Brienne cares to count since last they set eyes on each other.

"Father," Brienne says, getting to her feet.

"Daughter," he says in reply, and then before Brienne really knows what's happening, they meet in the middle of the room, her father's huge arms coming around her, her hands on his shoulders as she lays her head against his chest, just as she did when she was a little girl.

"I've missed you," Brienne says against his tunic.

"And I've missed you," he rumbles. He's still one of the tallest men Brienne has ever seen, though a little stooped now, and his blond hair is mixed liberally with grey. His light blue eyes are just as shrewd as they've ever been, though, as he places a finger under her chin and tilts her head up so that she has to look at him. "You still look like you," he declares after a moment, "even though you're a knight now—the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, no less!"

"And a mother," Brienne says.

"Yes, and that," her father agrees, and his arms fall away from her, ending the embrace.

"Please sit down," Brienne says, her heart sinking, and she indicates the other chair at the table, "and we can talk."

"I'll be in the nursery," Anera murmurs, as she passes Brienne on her way to doing just that.

Once the door has closed behind Anera, Brienne sits back down at the table, facing her father. "Would you like some tea?" she asks, reaching for another cup.

"No, thank you," he says, holding out one huge meaty hand to stop her. "Tell me about the child."

"I told you that the King has made her legitimate by Royal decree. She is a trueborn Lannister."

Her father looks at her long and hard, searching in her eyes for Brienne knows not what. "Why did you give yourself to him?" he asks. "I can't believe that he forced you. You would have fought him off, a one-handed man, I have no doubt."

Brienne takes a sip of tea, closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath. "I think you should know what happened before I took him to my bed, before you sit in judgement."

"Then tell me," her father says, sitting back in his chair. It's one thing Brienne has always loved about him. No matter how angry or disappointed he might be, not just with her but with anyone, he's always willing to listen.

And so Brienne tells him. She tells him about her first meeting with the Kingslayer, how she despised him at first, and then grew reluctantly to appreciate his sharp wit during the weeks of their journeying together, even while she never trusted him. And then his break for freedom, their fight on the bridge, aborted when they both became captives. His attempts to prevent her from being raped, and the loss of his sword hand. Then Harrenhal and the bear pit and her journey back to King's Landing with a man who would never be the Kingslayer to her again.

Her father listens to the tale in silence, but when she starts to talk about their time in King's Landing, he stops her. "You've left something out," he says. "There's something you're not telling me about why your sentiments towards him underwent such a change."

"Losing his sword hand for trying to protect me wasn't enough?"

"No," her father says.

"I'd forgotten how you do that," Brienne says.

"How I do what?" her father asks.

"How you see every single thing I try to sweep under the rug."

Her father shrugs. "You were never good at housework. It's just as well you weren't born to be a serving girl."

They share a small smile at that. _He wants to understand_ , Brienne thinks. _He wants to give his blessing to Little Cat, but he can't. Not yet. He needs the full truth._

 _Then tell him._ She can hear Jaime's voice, as clearly as if he's standing right beside her, so close that she could turn her head and kiss him. She stops herself from doing so. She knows she'll only find empty air, and right now she needs to concentrate on convincing her father.

So she tells her father about the conversation she and Jaime had in the bath together, though she omits to mention precisely where they were, or that they were both unclothed, when it took place. She tells him exactly how and why Jaime became the Kingslayer.

Lord Selwyn is quiet for a time. "That explains much," he says at last. "But why didn't he ever tell anyone of this?"

"Other than me," Brienne points out.

"Other than you," her father repeats, and she knows he's conceding the point she's making.

"He had his reasons," Brienne says, and her father nods. The reason why he did it is no longer of much moment. The important thing is that he confided in Brienne and no one else.

"And yet you didn't go to his bed then," her father observes, "or so I apprehend."

"No, not then," Brienne says. "Not for a long time after. We met and parted many times in many different places, until at last he arrived at Winterfell, not long before the Long Night."

"And then, in the face of almost certain death…" her father suggests.

"No, not even then," Brienne says, almost smiling. "The night before the battle, Jaime… Well, he knighted me. And he requested to serve under my command in the battle."

"He did, did he?" her father says, tilting his head to one side thoughtfully. "It would be fair to say that I wasn't expecting that."

"Jaime would have liked that. He loved doing what people did not expect of him. Especially, I think, after he met me."

"Hmm," says her father, folding his arms in front of him, but Brienne thinks that his gaze is far less cool than it was when the conversation started. "I met him once," he says abruptly. "In King's Landing, years ago, not so very long after Robert first became King. He was certainly skilled with a sword—even those who whispered 'Kingslayer' loudly behind his back wouldn't dare to do so to his face—but he seemed a proud and arrogant sort of man, looking down his nose at everyone and everything save the Queen, his sister."

Brienne can just imagine him. She knows that look, and she can see in her mind's eye just how beautiful he must have been, young and strong and whole, the golden lion of Lannister—though not half so beautiful as the older, wearier one-handed man who had lain in her arms and called her his darling.

"And then an odd thing happened," her father continues. "The youngest Lannister, Tyrion, the dwarf, who is now Hand of the King, entered the throne room. No one really noticed him at first, but then he did a handstand and several cartwheels and all but bounced down the aisle towards the Iron Throne, where the King was half-listening to some lord of the Small Council droning on about something or other."

"That sounds like Tyrion," Brienne says. "He likes to get people's attention."

"Well, he certainly got their attention that time," her father says, grinning at the memory. "Robert looked annoyed, and the Queen furious. The lord who had been talking was outraged at being so disrespected, as he saw it. Everyone there was looking and whispering. All save one."

"Jaime," says Brienne.

"He _smiled_ ," says her father. "Not the bored, mocking smile I'd seen on his lips before, but a fond smile, one of genuine amusement."

Brienne waits. Her father likes to take his time making his point.

"And then I realised that he was a man who was capable of looking below the surface, when he chose to, and appreciating what he found there. I'm not surprised that he turned out to have greater depths than he at first appeared, nor that you discovered them. Or that he looked below your surface, and found the treasure there."

Brienne nods, and sips her tea, looking at her father over the rim of her teacup. It's almost approval. Almost.

"I was telling you about the Long Night," she says, and her father settles back in his chair again. "Neither of us really expected to survive the battle. We thought to die together, fighting back to back. Or, if one of us fell, that the other would ensure that…" Brienne stops, and swallows hard, remembering again that terrible moment when the dead had risen before them, eyes bright blue and merciless. She swallows down a large mouthful of tea. "But we did survive, and the following night, I know that I felt then that life was short, that it was a gift that shouldn't be wasted. And I believe that Jaime felt the same." She looks down at her teacup for a moment, and then back up at her father. "We didn't have long together, only a few short weeks before war took him away from me again, but you should know that our daughter was born of love and I will never regret that, or her. I hope that you will give her your blessing. I hope that you will be a grandfather to her, and visit her often. I hope that you will still love me, even though most women in my position would be ruined."

Brienne turns away blindly, her eyes filmy with tears, and is only vaguely aware of her father rising to his feet. But then he's there, his arms coming around her, holding her to him and rocking her, murmuring reassurances into her hair—she's not ruined, could never be ruined in his eyes, he loves her and always will—as though she truly is his little girl once more.

The fact that she isn't ruined, even with Little Cat legitimised, is largely down to Brienne's unique position, she knows, no matter what a loving father might say. She's not simply a woman. She's the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard and allied to one of the most powerful families in all the kingdoms. No one would dare shun her, even just because of that. But of course she also has the King's complete confidence and support, and no one in his right mind wants to get on the wrong side of the Three-eyed Raven.

"I'm proud of you," her father says, once Brienne has dried her tears and they're sitting opposite each other at the table again.

"Proud enough to drink a cup of tea with me?" Brienne asks, trying to stop herself from grinning stupidly as her heart leaps.

Her father smiles. "Very well."

They sit there and sip their tea for a moment, and then her father says, "Your mother would be proud of you, too."

Brienne nearly chokes on her tea. Her father almost never mentions her mother. Not ever.

"I've never spoken of her to you much," her father says, echoing her thoughts. "For a long time, it hurt my heart to so much as speak her name."

Brienne nods, closing her eyes for a moment. She understands now as she never would have before.

"But she would have been proud of the woman you've become, the _knight_ you've become," her father goes on. "And she would have been proud to call granddaughter the little one who has been born from the love of two honourable knights who helped save everyone in Westeros."

Brienne smiles, her chin wobbling only the slightest little bit. "So, do you want to come and meet your granddaughter now?" she says.

"I was beginning to think you were never going to ask," her father says.

They get up, and he puts his arm around her shoulders, and together they make their way to the nursery.

As soon as Little Cat sees them, she squeals in delight.

"Muh!" she says. "Muhmuh!"

~*~

That afternoon, a ceremony takes place in the godswood. It's not a naming ceremony. Not exactly.

The day after she was born, Little Cat had been anointed with the seven oils and named in the light of the Seven in the private sept within the Red Keep. It was a small gathering, the sort of hasty ceremony that was performed for any baby born before its time. If the Stranger should come for her, she must have a name so he would know who she was, so that she wouldn't wander lost and alone forever in the afterlife.

Brienne had hated that ceremony.

Today's ceremony is very different. Most of the great and good of the Six Kingdoms, plus the Kingdom of the North, are gathered here in all their silks and velvets, adorned with jewels and precious metals, diamonds and flowers and peacock feathers in their hair. They're waiting.

Brienne is waiting too, outside the entrance to the godswood, with Little Cat squirming in her arms, and trying not to get impatient. It's not as cold now as it was even a month ago, when the white raven arrived from the Citadel, heralding the arrival of Spring, but Brienne still doesn't like keeping the baby outside for too long.

The King arrives at last, pushed in his chair by Ser Podrick. He smiles an enigmatic smile at Brienne, and then at Little Cat, and then nods for Podrick to continue. He takes his place by his sister at the very front, and at last things are ready to get underway.

Brienne enters the godswood holding Little Cat, together with Lord Selwyn at her left hand and Tyrion Lannister on her right. The guests part before them, and Brienne and her family walk down the aisle left between the two halves of the crowd until they reach the King and Queen.

If this was a naming ceremony, the High Septon would be the one to speak. Instead, it's Tyrion who comes forward to do the honours.

"His Grace the King, Her Grace Queen Sansa of the North, my lords, ladies and gentlemen, welcome one and all," Tyrion begins. "May I present to you all my niece, Catelyn of House Lannister, heiress to Casterly Rock."

They'd argued over that, Brienne and Tyrion. Tyrion had won, or thought he'd won, by pointing out that Little Cat must be his heir, since they were the only two Lannisters left. Brienne had told him to fix that situation by finding a wife and siring some heirs of his own. Tyrion had made some glib answer, and acted as if that put an end to it, but Brienne hasn't forgotten. If he doesn't choose a wife soon, _she'll_ find one for him.

Brienne brings Little Cat forward and Lord Selwyn takes her in his great hands and holds her aloft, above his head, so that everyone can see her.

The crowd applauds, and after a moment Little Cat starts to cry. Lord Selwyn hastily returns her to her mother, who rocks her and shushes her. Mercifully, it works, and the baby quiets.

Then it's Sansa's turn. In a clear voice, she pledges to be a friend to Catelyn Lannister all the days of her life, to help and protect her at need, and to keep her safe if ever the day should come when her family cannot do so.

The crowd applauds again.

Podrick pushes the King forward in his chair, and he speaks a pledge that's almost, but not quite, the same as the one that Sansa made a moment ago.

"I, Brandon Stark, First of My Name, King of the Andals and the First Men, Lord of the Six Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm, do solemnly swear that I will be a friend to this child, Catelyn of House Lannister, all the days of my life. I will help her and protect her at need, and any man—or woman—who thinks to harm her will feel my retribution, which is both swift and final."

The crowd doesn't applaud at first, and when a few people finally begin to clap, it soon peters out again. There's something about the passionless voice in which the King made his vow that makes them all take it seriously. Very seriously.

Brienne looks down at her daughter as the sun touches the horizon behind the godswood. She really is safe now, with a mother and grandfather and uncle to love her and protect her, and two sovereign monarchs pledging their support of her for the rest of their days. She'll be safe, or as safe as anyone can be in this uncertain world.

The sky is a brilliant mix of red and gold. Lannister colours, Brienne thinks, which is fitting on this day of all days. The last rays of the sun break through the gaps between the trees, and touch Little Cat's head, lending her a golden halo, almost like a crown made of light.

"You can be anything you want," Brienne whispers against the baby's head. "Even a queen."

 _Of course she can. And will. She's ours,_ says Jaime's voice, beside her.

 _Yes, she's ours,_ Brienne thinks. _Now and always._

And just for a moment, before the sun goes down and takes the day with it, Brienne thinks she can see two shadows stretching out along the ground before her where there should be only one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for sticking with the story right to the end!
> 
> I promise that in my next story Jaime will be alive and well and making Brienne's life... interesting. ;)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Telanu for looking this over for me, and Undun for technical advice!


End file.
